Chinook School Division receives extra one-time funding from Province to cope with inflation
The Chinook School Division has received extra one-time funding from the provincial government to cope with inflationary pressures during the current financial year.
The Chinook Board of Education approved the revised budget for 2022-23 at a regular board meeting, Sept. 12.
The Ministry of Education allocated a total of $20 million in additional inflationary funding to 27 school divisions in Saskatchewan for the 2022-23 school year. The Chinook School Division’s share of this amount is $1,211,000.
“We’ve included some costs to cover inflationary costs like fuel, utilities, insurance, and repairs and maintenance to buses,” Chinook Chief Financial Officer Sharie Sloman said. “Then we’re also looking to put some money towards doing some intervention to help bridge the gap that COVID caused within our classrooms for learning.”
The amount allocated to Chinook School Division was based on the funding model used by the Ministry of Education for budget allocations to school divisions.
“They put it towards transportation in the funding model,” she said. “It still went through the funding model, but through the transportation area.” Director of Education Mark Benesh added that Chinook School Division actually received a higher percentage of funding this particular time due to a focus on addressing inflationary costs related to transportation.
“When it normally goes through the funding model, because it’s almost always based on enrolment, then the larger cities get a larger percentage,” he explained. “But for this circumstance relating to increased transportation cost, fuel and other factors that were more related to transportation, of the $20 million they gave province-wide, we got a higher share than we normally would. It’s because of the ruralness of our school division and the area that we cover with our busing.”
The school division has experienced inflation related increases in spending on fuel as well as maintenance costs. For example, the expenditure on fuel is $500,000 higher than a year ago. Sloman noted there have been inflationary increases on a variety of budget items.
“Gas, utilities, our insurance,” she said. “This past year our insurance had quite an inflationary cost to it. Repairs and maintenance. We’re finding tyres, parts, all those things are going up. So naturally that’s also putting all of our costs up.”
This extra funding from the Ministry of Education can also be used for additional learning interventions during the 2022-23 school year. The Chinook School Division will use some of these funds to hire 10 educational assistants and temporary teachers.
The revised Chinook budget for 2022-23 will still result in a projected cash deficit of $3.86 million due to total operational expenditures of $93 million and revenues of $86.55 million. This deficit will be funded from the school division’s operational reserve fund, which is expected to be depleted in just over two years. It is not clear if the additional inflationary funding for the 2022-23 school year is an indication of future financial support from the provincial government.
“We hope that it’s going to mean funding in the future, because they’ve already realized the inflationary cost for this year,” Sloman said. “So we would hope that they build on it going forward, but there has been no guarantee. They have just told us that this is one-year funding that we’re receiving at this time.”
Benesh added that it will be difficult for the school division to deal with ongoing inflationary pressures if funding does not keep pace with those costs.
“They’re starting to recognize a greater inflationary impact, which is really what caused our deficit, because it increases every year and keeps adding,” he said. “If we don’t ever get funding in a year that matches that increase, then we obviously have to reduce to offset it.”