The Foothills School Division has released their fall budget update from their final School Board meeting of the year on December 11th.

A change in Provincial Government saw some programs, grants and funding cuts for schools across Alberta, and FSD was certainly impacted by the changes.

Originally the School board approved a deficit budget of $2.6 million for the 2019-2020 school year which was to be covered by reserves until they learned an additional amount of $1.3 million will be added to the projected deficit amount as a result of funding changes from the Provincial budget.

The boards insurance costs also increased by approximately $800,000 for this year.

All in the Board will now run a total deficit of over $4.7 million.

Assistant Superintendent Corporate Services, Drew Chipman says the changes were challenging.

"Some of our biggest challenges was that we lost Class Size Initiative funding in K-3 and at the high school level. That's an over $3 million reduction. We also had a fee reduction grant that the previous government put in place which was just under $650,000 that we lost." Chipman adds "The province did provide us some one time interim funding of around $2.7 million but then we took another significant hit in increased property taxes."

So the Board is now running a deficit budget. Now what?

Chipman says they managed to fund it through reserves and other initiatives without making cuts at the classroom level.

"It was difficult and we did discuss implementing more fees but we felt that at this point in the school year that wasn't fair to parents to even have that conversation. We spent most of our time looking for economies of scale, looking for opportunities centrally where we could make reductions that would limit impacts to the classroom."

He says in the end FSD was able to manage without increasing any class sizes, or increased any pressures in the classroom.

The division had to pull together at all levels to achieve that says Chipman.

"We had really good work from all across the division. We had our principals involved in helping us make a lot of those decisions, our directors were involved in a pretty inclusive internal review of how we could best make those decisions and the Board was onside as well."

As for next year, FSD doesn't know what's coming.

The Province is completing an assurance review which Chipman says means a funding framework review.

"We won't know what our funding is going to be for next year or future years until they release the next budget, which we're being told should be February or March."

Superintendent of Foothills School Board Chris Fuzessy says despite not knowing what lies ahead they are making plans to involve parents and communities in their next budget process.

"Despite the fact that we don't know what the funding framework will look like, we launched at our last board meeting what we're calling an assurance engagement plan to communicate and interact with our internal and external stakeholders around what we should be doing to realize further efficiencies or look at any revenue streams that might be possible as well, while also acknowledging our three year education plan and making sure our decisions reflect those goals we've set for ourselves."

FSD's full 2020 Budget Update can be found on their website.

 

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