EAST CENTRAL — The North East School Division (NESD) will be looking at “tough decisions” unless the provincial budget is “surprisingly positive” next year.
This comes after the division has released their 2019-20 budget, which Wanda McLeod, the division's superintendent of business administration, called “unsustainable”.
“The budget is not sustainable because we’re taking money out of our reserves to balance our budget,” McLeod said. “We’re hoping for more funding but if that doesn’t happen we’re going to have to make some tough decisions for the 2021 year.”
Money has been taken out of reserves to pay for shortfalls for the last three years. McLeod said the board thought it may be a short-term short flow in funding, “but that’s not the case.”
For the 2019-20 year, the NESD budget has a deficit of about $4.3 million which will be taken from reserves. In the 2018-19 year the division lost over $2 million from reserves.
The reserves currently contain about $7.5 million the board can use. There is more in the reserves, but those dollars are ear-marked for certain items. One example being funds generated by school fundraisers, which are earmarked for the school that raised the money.
Approximately $2.2 million of the $4.3 million from the 2019-20 year is for on-going costs such as replacement of technology in the classroom and school buses for the division.
Approximately $1.5 million of it is going into an LED upgrade to all of the lighting in NESD schools.
The LED project hopes to save 50 to 70 per cent of consumption costs in electricity bills. The expected payback is about 6.5 years.
The board stated the news lighting will save about half of the time the NESD electrician is spending is on lighting issues, which will allow him to spend that time on preventative maintenance.
McLeod said the board has not decided what cuts will be made if more funding isn’t received in the next year.
At the current time the board is assuming they won’t be receiving additional funding and is beginning the planning process for potential cuts.
“We’ll be looking in the fall as to what can be done, so we can prepare the schools well in advance if there are any changes at the school level,” McLeod said.
In March 2019, the NESD received an increase of approximately $300,000 in funding for the operations from the province. Funding has decreased by about $3 million since the 2015 to 2016 year.
The budget was discussed at the final NESD board meeting of the school year on June 18.
Some of the highlights planned for next year include a strategy called Visible Learning.
“[It] is really about our students taking greater ownership over their learning and being very deliberate about what a good learner looks like and how do they ask support from teachers?” said Don Rempel, director of education with the NESD. “What kind of processes should they put in place to demonstrate their learning?”
Rempel said for this program the schools are going to be talking to the students about how to have greater accountability in their learning, so they can be more engaged and successful in their learning.
“The research is basically guiding teachers to do those things that are going to have high impact returns as far as student outcomes. So we’ll be doing a lot of professional development with our teachers over the next three years.”
Another highlight is the provincial budget has identified funding for an Indigenous language program in schools this coming year.
“Our problem would be the recruitment and retention of language instructors,” Rempel said. “We’ve always had a challenging time in that area, but it might be an area we might pursue in the future, if we can have Cree language instruction at some of our high schools for our students. We think it would be well received.”
Rempel said it is currently in the system planning to explore next year.
