Budget Forum discusses inflation, funding and more students in division
The Lord Selkirk School Division (LSSD) hosted a community forum to discuss the 2024/25 draft budget. The conversation relayed to our community the ways in which the school division is utilizing it’s funding to keep local students learning.
“This is an important night to be able to share and hear from you, our community, your voice. [To] hear from you what’s important, what are the priorities that you have within our school division, and are they aligned with where we’re going. That’s really important for us as a board and senior admin, to be able to hear that,” said LSSD Superintendent Jerret Long.
He then went on to explain that LSSD’s strategic plan involves prioritizing students’ literacy and numeracy skills as well as their mental health and well-being. This is done through Indigenous education and moves towards reconciliation; prioritizing language programming, which includes French immersion, and bilingual programs; an emphasis on smaller class sizes; and support from student services.
“We’re also excited to hear from our community about the options and things that they think are important as we head into budget considerations, and look forward to next year,” he said.
Kelly McDonald, secretary-treasurer for the LSSD then took over to share the numbers coming out of the division.
She explained that there are 3,940 students, 517 employees, and 47 bus routes for the division which spans 1,492 km of area and includes the City of Selkirk, and RMs of St. Andrews, St. Clements, Victoria Beach, Alexander, and Brokenhead.
Some current year highlights from the school division include four teaching positions added to address enrollment increases, a $100,000 grant to continue the Elders and Knowledge Keepers program, the replacement of a leaking waterline at Lockport School and more.
The school board is also facing challenges. As was mentioned in previous years, after COVID-19 they are seeing more use of sick days by staff. They have open postings for substitute teachers, educational assistants, and bus drivers. There has been increased student enrolment that is not immediately recognized in funding announcements. IT equipment and resources are ever-evolving. School buildings, buses and other resources age and require upkeep and inflation has made supplies more costly.
McDonald then got into the funding amounts sent out by the provincial government.
“The way that they did this backgrounder is a little misleading. Your eyes want to go right to the end that says that we received a 2.1% increase to our funding for the year,” she said.
Part of that 2.1% increase includes the new nutrition program which will start in 2024/25. This program has strict stipulations on how the funding can be used. Of the $435,000 that they will receive as part of the nutrition program, there are two schools that are part of the division’s community schools program that will each receive $120,000 of the funds and the remainder will be split among the remaining schools.
“We’re very grateful for these funds. Unfortunately, they don’t help us in our operating budget since they are strictly for the nutrition program. So, what that means at the end of the day is that for the Lord Selkirk School Division, our operating budget actually only increased by a 0.6% change,” said McDonald.
The other avenue that funding for the school division comes from is the education property tax. To maintain staff and programming levels the current estimate is that the mill rate for education taxes will need to be increased by 4%.
Some projected expenses that the division expects to have to cover in the upcoming year are an overall addition of 2.0 FTE teaching staff, and maintaining all other staffing positions. Purchasing of one new school bus, as well as increased costs in many areas.
McDonald explained that the next steps include final budget revisions, final budget approval, tax notices being issued and a budget template being submitted to the Department of Education.
After her presentation residents’ questions were answered. Areas such as student-to-teacher ratios and how the division is dealing with the increase in population in our area were addressed as well as a few other funding and education questions. Residents who are interested in viewing the meeting for themselves will have access to a recording of the meeting on the school division’s website shortly.
“The opportunity to ask questions does certainly not end in this timeframe. If you are viewing this at a later date and have questions, we would welcome those at any time,” said Lena Kublick, LSSD board chair.
