INNISFAIL — Chinook’s Edge School Division (CESD) trustees have approved the $132-million 2022-2023 budget, which calls for an operating deficiency of $4.187 million.
Kurt Sacher, the superintendent of the 11,000-student division, says the new budget does not anticipate any increase in school fees or staff layoffs.
“There are no fee increases being proposed,” Sacher said. “Our staffing levels, we expect them to slightly increase in both support staff and teaching, so we don’t anticipate any employee groups having to deal with layoffs. We are very pleased about that.”
“We are very confident that we will have the resources we need to take tremendous care of our students and staff and support our families in our communities.”
While capital purchases of $1.2 million will result in a decline in the division’s operating reserves, a series of schools and department budget transactions at the end of the fiscal year is expected to see those reserves increase, he said
“We are not terribly concerned about the deficit for a couple of reasons,” he said. “With the best of our ability to draft the budget, you have different estimates that are involved in the budget and we know from past history that a number of those would have been conservative estimates.
“So while the actual operation deficiency in the budget is $4.187 million, we expect that to come in closer to $1.5 million. And in addition to that, there have been some recent government announcements, particularly in the area of mental health support for students, that we hope will potentially fund some of the areas that we are supporting our of reserves.”
The board has made a commitment to take funds directly out of its unrestricted reserve to support the newly created Social Emotional Team for the next three years to provide mental health supports for schools, he said.
“The board is also supportive of additional dollars being necessary for our family school wellness team,” he said. “So those costs are what we anticipate will consume the bulk of the reserve, but some of it may be essentially back-filled, once we get the specifics from recent government announcements.
“To this point we don’t have the details yet. That’s wheat we are waiting to hear from government on and we expect to hear in the next few weeks.”
The CESD’s 2022-2023 budget was filed with Alberta Education on May 31.
