Christ the Redeemer School Division saw some small changes to its current budget in light of the changes made to funding programs by the provincial government.
Associate superintendent, corporate services for Christ the Redeemer Michael Kilcommons, explains that typically the provincial government sets the budget around March, and the division has to submit its preliminary budget in May. This year was a little different.
“This year they said to wait until June of 2019, but even with that, they said ‘we don’t have the budget, tell us what assumptions you will make,’” he said. “So we made some assumptions and came up with our budget. They announced the budget on October 24, it was a little bit steeper than we imagined,”said Kilcommons.
He said they were aware the government was looking for savings and while they were able to predict some of the changes, there were some they were not able to gauge.
There were three grants affected. The Classroom Improvement Fund cost about $1.26 million. The Classroom Size Initiative was also taken out, which cost the division about $4 million. The School Fee Reduction Program also cost the division about $630,000. The government, however, returned about $4.5 million as a transitional grant.
“We ended up with less money. We had to scramble a little bit, but we had a little bit of time,” he said. “We cut the budget as thinly as we could and it didn’t affect any staffing. We maintained the teaching staff and the support staff we had, so we are very happy about that, and class sizes. But it did hurt a little bit we had to cut into anything that was discretionary.”
The division reported a deficit budget of $500,000, which they were able to make up with reserves.
“That’s a lot of money, but in the big picture it is about a half of a per cent of our annual budget,” he said.
He said looking toward the next school year the government has been doing a funding review. He said in March Alberta Education will be releasing their funding program for next year.
“They are giving us advanced notice so we can adapt if necessary, and it is really hard to predict how this is going to look,” said Kilcommons. “We are preparing for a bigger deficit. But we can’t really predict that and around the province, depending who you are talking to, it could be a steady budget, it could be way worse or it could be a pleasant surprise.”
“We are planning for a further reduction, but we are hoping we’re wrong.”
He said the division is committed in the coming year to not charging school fees for registration or classroom activities.
