Garden Valley School Division’s board of trustees approved a $67.3 million financial plan for the 2026-2027 school year at a special meeting Friday.
It’s an increase of over $4M from the year before to meet the growing needs of the projected 4,371 students throughout the division this fall.
The budget planning process began late last year when trustees met with local parents, teachers, and school administrators, explained board chair Leah Klassen
“We asked them what they thought: what do we need? What do we not need?” she said. “The response we heard again and again was: don’t cut. Don’t cut staff, don’t cut programming, try to maintain the status quo as much as we can.”
When they began crunching the numbers early in the new year, well before the provincial government had announced any details about what funding GVSD would be receiving, the financial outlook was pretty sobering.
“We did a status quo [draft] budget, so if we were not to add anything and just go based on last year’s funding. We were short by $2.9 million,” Klassen shared. “The majority of that is the contractual obligations that we have—[teacher salary] harmonization comes into this next budget year. That’s just the reality of what we’re working with.”
The province has mandated that teachers in all schools across Manitoba be paid the same rates, which for many rural divisions means a significant expenditures increase year over year.
Salaries and benefits in fact make up the largest piece of the financial pie for GVSD—84 per cent of the entire budget for the more than 700 staff employed across the division—coming in at $56.8M (up from $53M in the current school year).
That’s followed by services at $5.3M (up from $5.1M), supplies and material at $3.5M (up from $3.3M), and transfers at $1.5M (down from $1.8M).
On the revenue side, GVSD receives the bulk of its funding from the Province of Manitoba. Year over year operational funding totals $34.9M for 2026-2027, an increase of $821,144 or 2.4 per cent, though that does include several significant pieces of funding earmarked solely for things like nutritional programs, special needs, and salary harmonization.
The budget further calls for revenue of $19M from municipal taxes (up $2.3M from the current year) and about $1.3M from other sources (up $200,000).
With the directive from the community to, at the least, maintain the current level of teachers and programming, the board had quite a task ahead of it to figure out how they were going to make end’s meet this year, Klassen said.
“We had to have that conversation, and it was really a philosophy conversation—do we cut teachers? Eighty-four per cent of our budget is staffing, so if you’re going to make cuts that’s where they’re going to be,” she said, noting they also discussed not filling vacant administrative positions and taking another look at whether the time is right to introduce new programming like Big Picture Learning (an alternative form of high school education slated to launch in GVSD this fall).
Ultimately, though, the board decided raising taxes a modest amount was the most responsible move to ensure the level of education in GVSD is where it needs to be.
“We’re really doing a status quo budget, with one new position, a behavioral specialist, and that is to hopefully help with the classroom complexities issues that we’ve been hearing so much about from our staff,” Klassen said, noting an increasing number of students are struggling in classroom environments. “There are a lot of different needs that are coming into our classrooms that maybe haven’t been there in the past.”
Beyond that position and the hiring of additional educational assistants to further support teachers in the classroom, there are no new big-ticket items in this budget—no capital projects, bus purchases, or other costly items.
“We just can’t do it this year,” Klassen said, noting the maintenance budget, which was increased in the current school year’s budget, will see to ongoing needs on that front. The 2026-2027 financial plan also has a surplus of about $660,000 to be put into reserve for any emergency needs that might pop up.
When it comes to the mill rate, GVSD is increasing it to 13.39 from the current 12.18, a jump of 9.88 per cent.
What that translates into is that for a home currently valued $393,050, school taxes will increase from $2,154 to $2,367 annually. But after the provincial school tax rebate, the homeowner would pay $768 in net school taxes—an increase of about $113 from the year before.
Meanwhile, a business valued at $552,500 will be paying nearly $433 more annually in school taxes, after rebates, while farmland valued at $2.28M will see an annual net increase of about $359.
“We’re doing what we can on our end to be modest and conservative in our spending,” Klassen said, noting she hopes taxpayers are aware that the board most certainly grappled with the decision to raise taxes. “We do not want to have to put any more burden on our taxpayers than what we absolutely have to … but there are cost pressures that are beyond our control.
“With an increase on a residential home of about $113 per year, $9 per month, we hope that taxpayers will recognize the benefit in us trying to keep class sizes smaller, trying to have additional supports that our children need to be able to excel in school.”
