School boards to dip into reserves to hire teachers as enrolment expands

Regina’s two school divisions will borrow from their reserve funds to support a record number of students predicted to enrol this fall.

The Regina Catholic School Division is expecting an all-time high student population come September, with an additional 365 students to enrol.

That’s three-per-cent enrolment growth for the division, for a total of 12,140 students.

Meanwhile, the Regina Public School Division expects an additional 450 students in September.

“Our ongoing challenge is to continue to fund enrolment increases,” board chair Katherine Gagne said after approving the 2018-19 budget at Tuesday evening ’s meeting. “It’s important for people to realize that’s the size of an elementary school that we will grow by,” she added.

The division had about 23,650 students as of Sept. 30, 2017.

“Our most pressing need is to make sure we get enrolment growth looked after,” Curt Van Parys, Regina Catholic business and finance superintendent, said after Wednesday afternoon’s meeting to approve his division’s budget.

“We’re hearing the human cry for additional supports in terms of mental health of students. The band program’s exploding. It’s all tied to enrolment.”

The Catholic school board will see an additional 20 full-timeequivalent teachers and 2.6 education support professionals to support enrolment growth.

A further 11.75 FTEs will be added in areas including English as an additional language programming (1.5 FTEs), elementary school counselling (one FTE), the band program (one FTE), and the Early Learning Intensive Support pilot program (five FTEs).

Regina Public will add 23.5 fulltime-equivalent teachers, including one elementary-level Indigenous advocate teacher, and 16.5 FTE educational assistants.

The Regina Public School Board will borrow $297,240 from reserve funds to cope with increased enrolment and inflationary pressures in its 2018-19 budget, which sees total spending of $246.7-million.

“You’re looking at another year of inflation and another year of increased enrolment I expect throughout the province,” Regina Public’s deputy director of division services Debra Burnett said.

“If your inflation runs at two per cent a year, it means that your money buys that much less every year and at some point something gives, right?”

In its $117-million budget, Regina Catholic plans to borrow $354,600 from its reserve funds to tackle three special projects, two of which are one-time-only.

This is in part due to the provincial government not fully restoring the education funding that was cut two years ago.

“We want to see back to full funding from the cuts that (occurred) two years ago,” said board chair Rob Bresciani. “(We’re) optimis- tic that that is also the goal of the government, so hopefully that will happen.”

Bresciani said he does not want to see borrowing from reserves become a habit.

“To know where we came from back in the ’70s, ’80s, where we were almost broke, I have made it part of my philosophy as a trustee not to ever go into reserves unless it would be a capital or one-time thing,” added Bresciani.

Van Parys sees the situation differently.

“Quite frankly, that’s what reserves are for,” he said.

“The best thing I heard was a former Regina Public trustee Mary Hicks, who equated using reserves on an ongoing basis kind of like using your savings account to buy groceries. You run out of savings but you’ve still got to eat. That’s stuck in my mind ever since I’ve been in this business (33 years).”

To implement a new student information system, which is ministry-mandated, the board will spend $185,000 from reserves.

A further $75,000 will fund a team-building initiative to improve staff performance and morale.