It will be a tight financial year ahead for the Southeast Cornerstone Public School Division. The school division’s 2016-17 budget was approved by the board during their monthly meeting on June 28 with a budgeted cash deficit of $3.2 million. The budget will be send to the Ministry of Education for final approval.
The proposed budget for 2016-2017 includes total revenue of $101.7 million, operating expenditures of $107.4 million, capital expenditures of $4.4 million, and total staff of 1,065.61 full-time equivalents.
“The budget is prepared in accordance with Public Sector Account Board standards and contains non-cash items such as amortization of tangible capital assets and employee future benefits,” said Shelley Toth, chief financial officer of Cornerstone.
“The budget continues to support the school division’s priorities and the provincial Education Sector Strategic Plan,” said Toth.
Priorities for the school division include improving graduation rates, mathematics and early literacy outcomes, as well as supporting First Nations and Métis education achievement and early learning support. “The budget also includes an expansion of the Cyberstone Virtual School from Grades 10 to 12 to Grades 8 to 12, offering online education to students across the school division,” said Toth.
For 2016-17, Cornerstone is projecting total revenues of $101.7 million consisting of $99.8 million in operating and $1.9 million in capital funding. Total operating revenue is $2.1 million lower than than the prior year’s budget.
The majority of the division’s operating funding comes from the provincially determined property taxation and grants from the Ministry of Education.
For capital revenue, the preventive maintenance and renewal funding received an increase of $400,000 from the previous year’s budget. The 2016-2017 budget does not contain any major capital funding for new schools.
The total operating expenditures of $107.4 million is projected for the 2016-17 fiscal year, an increase of $98,000 from the prior year. Budgeted staffing includes 560.0 teaching full time equivalents, a decrease of 0.35 from prior year, and non-teaching staff of 505.61 FTE’s, a decrease of 25.05 from prior year.
The total capital expenditures of $4.4 million is projected for Cornerstone for the upcoming year. The majority of these are preventive maintenance, such as roof replacements at several schools.
