Preliminary budgets for both the Chinook's Edge School Division and Red Deer Regional Catholic Schools are currently in the works and expected to be put before trustees in May and June respectively.At Chinook's Edge, the provincial government has estimated it will be paying $104,612,900 for 2012-13 to the division, a 3.4 per cent increase over the same figure a year earlier. Red Deer Regional Catholic Schools are estimated to see a 4.3 per cent increase in operational funding to $67,293,900.ìThey used some assumptions about enrolment Ö and I know they had to kind of estimate some of that,î said Susan Roy, secretary-treasurer of CESD. ìAnd I wanted to take and calculate my own. I wanted to understand, without any changes in enrolment, what does this mean for our division,î Roy said, noting that her own preliminary calculations without taking into account enrolment figures show a potential 1.8 per cent increase in operational funding.Roy is still working on projected enrolment figures for next year, but the best guess is that general enrolment will remain stable while the number of kindergarten students will rise slightly to about 900 students from 868 this year.ìWhen you strip away the enrolment increases, based on my estimates of our funding, I think it's about (a) 1.8 per cent increase for Chinook's Edge,î she said.Roy said she hopes to put the preliminary budget before trustees in May.ìWe're currently working with our school administrators to kind of try and come up with how best to allocate funds for next year based on their needs out in each of the 40 schools,î she said.At Red Deer Catholic Regional Schools, secretary-treasurer Rod Steeves said his best estimate at this point is a 1.1 per cent increase in funding without taking into account enrolment figures. Some of the factors that might impact the final budget that the division comes up with next fall ñ the provisional budget will be passed in June ñ will include a new teachers contract with Alberta Teachers' Association members. The current one expires on Aug. 31.ìAll boards across the province will be in those negotiating situations. That contract will be something that we'll have to estimate this year. I don't know when we'll finalize those negotiations,î he said.Currently, Steeves is projecting an extremely conservative one per cent increase in enrolment for 2012-13, until more information is known later this year. He said it's likely that student enrolment will increase more than that.Steeves said he is still working on the amount that the average teacher would cost the division, as well as getting estimates from the transportation, maintenance and various other departments to roll into a preliminary budget to put before trustees. He said the latest estimates will be taken into account in March and provided to trustees at the next meeting in March. The preliminary budget will likely be passed by trustees in June.
