Chinook's Edge School Division officials are concerned they will face ongoing budgetary challenges for its upcoming fiscal year as a result of continued belt-tightening measures released in the Alberta government's 2014 budget.
The province's budget, released earlier this month, could mean the school division may be forced to once again rely on up to $1 million in reserves to make its own stretched $122-million budget work, said senior officials.
"I don't have the total tallied up yet but I suspect it is going to be at least a million dollars,î said division treasurer Susan Roy, adding she still needs to see how much individual schools, which still need to prepare their budgets, have to dip into their own reserves.
She said the division is currently making the 2013/14 budget work by having to go into its reserves by the same $1-million amount.
Roy said the big challenge for the division is that it took a "big hitî last year when the government restructured, reduced and cut a number of grants. "Overall as a division we had to make big cuts last year. We were hoping and dreaming that some of those (grants) would be reinstated, and they were not,î she said.
Roy said the only new money the board received was the two per cent increase on a "fewî instructional grants, which will bring in an extra "couple hundred thousandî for the division.
She said the division will also see a "slightî increase in overall enrolment, which will also give the division an additional $400,000.
"But that only gives us the ability to put back into the budget some of the things we had to cut,î said Roy, adding the division had to cut funding for technology renewal.
"When you are servicing 11,000 kids and 650 teachers and all of that, you are constantly needing to renew technology. That $600,000 that we got is all going to technology renewal. That is not going to help us when it comes to the amount we had to spend out of reserves to make the last budget work.î
Kurt Sacher, the division superintendent of schools, said the province's 2014 budget left his staff and board a "little disappointedî as the new revenues do not come in line with rising proportional costs.
"When student enrolment goes up 1.6 per cent and the government says ëChinook's Edge you get another 1.6 per cent in funding', the difficulty in that logic is when you have more students you need more staff,î said Sacher. "You really haven't done anything other than allow us to hold the line.î
He said there is additional pressure with increased staff benefit costs that have to be picked up somewhere in the division's overall budget.
"It is just another year where we are going to have to make do with a little bit less proportionally,î he said.
Division officials said they are especially disappointed that the province did not reinstate Fuel Price Contingency Funding, monies needed to support the rising cost of gas for its fleet of 100 buses.
Sacher said it is an issue they repeatedly advocated to provincial officials to have returned to their budget.
"We are one of the largest rural school divisions in the province and when they don't provide that subsidy for fuel with the number of buses we have running across our school division, those costs really put our transportation budget in jeopardy,î said Sacher.
Roy said the province's fuel subsidy for the division, which comes in at around $500,000 out of the $6-million transportation budget, started in 2005. It was then cancelled for two school years and then reinstated in 2011/12. However, it was then cut again last year.
"The fuel funding was one thing we were really hopeful that was going to be reinstated because our transportation budget is stretched right now,î said Roy.
Sacher said the end result of the 2014 provincial budget means that the division will have to move forward in all areas with another one per cent correction, which translates to $1 million less.
"It is a concern for us,î he said. "We really just want to see education be a priority with government, and we will continue to advocate in that direction.î
