Regina school divisions set late June meetings for budget delivery

Article content

The deadline to submit final budgets has been extended by a month, but school divisions in Regina are still planning to have their budgets ready by the end of June despite the allowance.

Article content

The Ministry of Education confirmed that the deadline for school divisions to submit final 2023-24 budgets, typically the end of June, has been extended to July 31.

Article content

The change is meant to allow more time to reconcile the $40 million funding adjustment announced two weeks ago, but all three school divisions in the Regina area are still looking at finalizing budgets by the original deadline.

Regina Catholic will present a finalized budget, as usual, on June 22 in a special meeting, and Regina Public Schools has set a special budget meeting for June 27.

Prairie Valley School Division, which encompasses the rural communities surrounding Regina, presented a final budget for approval at the regular board meeting on Wednesday.

Article content

Article content

Although schedules are on track, Regina Catholic does feel that the last-minute funding has created more work to meet those deadlines.

“When the province delivers a budget (in March), we as a division are already well on our way into our budget development process,” said chief financial officer Josh Kramer.

Regina Catholic begins cataloguing budget elements in January, he explained. By March, financial pressures — including utilities, salary needs and inflation costs — and what new programs are a top priority for funding are already identified. Post-provincial budget, focus turns to the minutiae of how to use provincial grants and finalizing enrolment projections.

Kramer estimated total work time on budget preparation in an average year equates to about 360 hours, or a month and a half, between January and June, plus the time spent consulting with board trustees.

Article content

This June, in order to shuffle in the new funding added by the ministry, he estimates adding another two weeks worth of work by the time a final budget is presented later in the month.

He said more dollars ahead of budget finalization is “appreciated” and it has meant backtracking, but adding more funding is a smoother process than clawing it back.

“It is additional work on me, but it’s less stress in that we have more supports in place for students,” Kramer said.

Regina Catholic received $1.2 million more to address classroom composition, which Kramer said was largely directed toward English as an additional language, or EAL, and learning catalyst staff.

The division has seen an increase of 600 new students since September, largely linked to booming immigration in the province, marking a record high for enrolment.

Article content

But while the funding adjustment mitigated some pressures, division maintain it still is not enough to support status quo.

The top-up offers some for staffing and enrolment pressures, but not other areas like lagging preventative maintenance funding that is leaving divisions, including Regina Catholic, with tight purses for the upkeep of aging facilities.

Regina Public Schools director of education Darren Boldt said at Tuesday’s board meeting that administration is “busy” reworking the upcoming budget, describing it as a “more positive challenge” than during the weeks following March.

“There is no doubt that the additional funding will ease many pressure points,” said Boldt. “However, the funding will not be sufficient to reverse all of our planned budget measures.”

Article content

Kramer said the top-up model the ministry has deployed now two years in a row is not feasible in the long-term, as divisions need promises of continued funding.

“It is not ideal. It should have been dealt with on budget day,” he said.

lkurz@postmedia.com

Article content