Prairie Spirit taps reserves

The Prairie Spirit School Division has taken $2.9 million from its reserves to make up for what it calls a shortfall in provincial funding.

The provincial money doesn’t cover expenses from an enrolment increase of at least 170 students in September, board chair Larry Pavloff said.

“We’ve been increasing over the past nine years,” Pavloff said.

In addition to cutting spending, the division was required by the province to find $400,000 in efficiencies. The division decided to use reserve funds rather than merge bus routes or cut teaching positions, Pavloff said.

“We don’t want to impact students through finding those efficiencies.”

However, reserve money is meant for emergencies, not operational costs, he said.

The funding model the province uses isn’t a per-student figure. It also includes factors like the socioeconomic position of families in the area, immigration, transportation costs, debt, and any associate schools on the books.

If the division doesn’t receive more money next year, Pavloff said some programs are at risk, such as professional development for teachers and student engagement at schools with high First Nations and Metis populations.

He said he hopes this is the only time the board will have to dip into reserve funds. He met with Education Minister Don Morgan and five MLAs this week.

“The Ministry has said, ‘yes, the new funding model isn’t working for you, but we don’t know what we can do to make it work for you,’ so they told us they’d get back to us in a month’s time.”

Assistant deputy minister of education Donna Johnson has met with the Prairie Spirit board. She said enrolment growth is just one of nine major variables the provincial funding formula takes into account. The money allotted also depends on the pattern of growth, and what grades a division is growing at the most, Johnson said.

She wouldn’t rule out any midyear adjustments to Prairie Spirit’s funding.

“We have from the outset said that the funding formula will be improved and adjusted as we work toward making the funding formula and funding distribution model the most equitable it could be,” Johnson said.

Provincial funding to Prairie Spirit increased by $1.8 million compared to last year, Johnson said. She acknowledged $1.4 million of that will go toward paying off debt.

With files from Janet French