The annual report issued by the South East Cornerstone Public School Division a couple of weeks ago not only spells out most of the financial details surrounding this $105 million educational enterprise but also a number of other numbers and informational tidbits that illustrate the division's size and scope.
The division currently has at least one major construction project on the books, a $26 million rebuild and expansion of the Weyburn Comprehensive School, the report noted.
Repairs to the 45-year-old Estevan Comprehensive School amounted to just over $1 million in the past fiscal year.
The report indicates that overall governance of the division costs just over $602,000 with $187,000 of that being board member salaries plus another $92,700 for professional development sessions for the board members and a further $75,200 for advisory committees.
Former board chairwoman Carol Flynn led the pack on governance remuneration and expenses in the 2012-13 school year with $25,160 in remuneration payments plus $7,127 in travel costs and another $9,300 for professional development expenses. Current chairman, Harold Laich accepted a total of $37,118 with his salary or direct compensation being $24,039 and other items such as meals, travel and professional development expenses making up the rest.
On the administrative side, the total expenses came in at $1.4 million with salaries taking up $797,000 including the director's wages of $182,000 and six other senior administrative positions at between $130,000 and $157,000. There are currently 38 employees of the Cornerstone division earning in excess of $100,000 per year within an employee base of approximately 1,100. The division caters to 8,500 students who are housed in 38 facilities along with a number who are accommodated through the division's Cyberstone online courses.
Teacher salaries are, by far, the division's largest expense coming in at just over $45 million for the 500 educators plus another $2.34 million in payments for their contracted benefits that are shared between the employee and the division. Instruction expenses total just over $67.5 million taking into consideration such things as supplies, travel, and instructional aids.
The operation of the heating and cooling plants plus maintenance costs amount to just under $13.1 million, and student transportation comes in at $9.15 million with approximately half of the student body being transported by school bus to their various schools around the division that extends as far as Moosomin to the northeast, Pangman and Ogema to the west and the Manitoba border to the east.
The division has five school bus garages and maintenance sites and the buses travel along 113 routes daily during the school year covering 26,800 kilometres on each of those days with the average student time on the bus being 45 minutes and the longest being an hour and a half. The transportation report notes that the buses travel nearly another 46,000 kilometres on additional school-related trips and the average cost of transporting one student for a school year is approximately $2,200 or $1.80 per kilometre. The division deploys a total of 153 buses with the average age of the buses being 14 years.
Students are offered a busing service if the distance between the school and their home is at least 0.4 km. The service includes contracted bus service as well as division-operated buses and it also accommodates special needs students who may require more specific transportation service.
About 75 per cent of the students enrolled in the public division are able to graduate from Grade 12, the report noted among other things, and those include early learning and care programs, English as an additional language and specialized educational consultancy services.
