School’s fund to plug gaps
‘‘[It’s] really, really difficult to make ends meet.’’
Rob Wemyss, Clifton Terrace School principal
A Nelson primary school struggling to make ends meet as its funding drops and costs spiral has set up an endowment fund.
Clifton Terrace School announced the fund last night at a community launch, which it hopes will ‘‘set the ball rolling’’ for donations.
Principal Rob Wemyss said ‘‘high decile’’ schools were finding it increasingly difficult to fund things like classroom supplies and support staff.
The school in the suburb of Atawhai still couldn’t opt into the Government’s donations scheme, which meant it lost out on about $45,000 a year, he said.
Decile 8 to 10 schools are ineligible for the scheme, introduced in 2020, which provided just over $150 per pupil per year. Some of those schools became eligible this year with the introduction of the Equity Index, which is replacing the decile system.
Clifton Terrace, a decile 9 school with about 300 pupils, received around $8000 in parental donations.
It was unfair to keep asking parents at some schools to put their hands in their pockets, Wemyss said.
It was ‘‘hard to gauge’’ the overall effect the Equity Index would have on the school, he said, but Government funding that Clifton Terrace used to pay for things like equipment and maintenance had shrunk by $40,000 for next year compared to last year. This was because the school’s roll was slightly down, he said.
Nelson schools would also no longer receive funding through the ministry’s Isolation Index – losing about $15,000 a year, Wemyss said.
’’It just makes it really, really difficult to make ends meet.’’
Money donated or raised by the school will now go into the endowment fund, managed by charitable foundation the Top of the South Community Foundation. The foundation and the school’s board of trustees will decide each year which funds will be spent, and which invested to help the money last. Donations qualify for tax rebates.
The fund was set up thanks to a generous donation from a current school family.
Hope School, west of Nelson, a decile 9 school, said it would also have to start to ‘‘think creatively’’ to ensure its needs were met.
Principal Freya Hogarth said the school wasn’t only missing out on the donations scheme, but things like counsellors in schools and school lunches.
‘‘I understand the schools in the really needy areas really need those resources, but we still have families who need those resources, too, and they are disadvantaged by being at a school like ours.’’
Hope School was ‘‘mid range’’ in the Equity Index, but would get less funding than under the decile system from next year, Hogarth said.
Costs including support staff salaries, office administration, heating and power were ‘‘just going up and up’’, she said.
Nelson schools will no longer receive targeted isolation funding, with the ministry now considering population centres over 60,000 to provide all the goods and services needed by schools.
‘‘We’ve kind of been double hit,’’ Hogarth said.
Waimea College in Richmond said the cost of operating the school’s diesel-powered central heating system rose by $62,000 this year compared to last year – with the same fuel consumption.
Principal Scott Haines said the electricity bill at the school of around 1500 students had increased by $15,000.
The ministry had increased the operations grants it gave schools, but this was ‘‘nowhere close to receiving a dollar-fordollar top-up,’’ he said.
The Ministry of Education said a 2.75% increase to schools’ operational grant components provided in Budget 2022 was the highest across-the-board increase in the last decade.
Group manager policy John Brooker said ‘‘transition arrangements’’ were in place to support schools facing a reduction in funding as the Equity Index was introduced, and no school would lose funding due to the index or new threshold for targeted isolation funding in 2023. Schools and kura concerned about heat, light and water funding – increased by a total of $11m in Budgets 2019 and 2020 – could request a review of their allocation if they met certain criteria.