Northern Lights Public Schools (NLPS) is working on juggling their budget after the province announced the re-allocation of three main education grants.
“We saw some reduction to our transportation revenue, and then reduction to what was formerly the class size initiative grant now becoming the one-time transition grant,” explained NLPS secretary-treasurer Paula Elock. “We still have to try to figure out how we’re going to allocate those funds, and what the implications are overall to the school division.”
When the UCP government released their provincial budget on Oct. 24, they announced the re-allocation of the Classroom Improvement Fund (CIF), school fee reduction, and class size funding grants. Instead, school boards will be receiving a “one-time per student transition grant” for the 2019/20 school year.
While NLPS was already anticipating the elimination of the CIF and school fee reduction grants, which they accounted for in their 2019/20 budget, it was hearing they would no longer receive class size funding that came as a shock.
Those dollars were used by school divisions to hire staff to keep the ratio of students to teachers manageable in each classroom.
According to Elock, they had included $2.2-million in their budget for the class size initiative for the 2019/20 school year.
“The change is tough, because we’ve already staffed our schools,” she explained. “It’s tough because of the time of year that it was announced, and we’ve already made decisions for operations for this year.”
The one-time transition grant for NLPS is roughly $1.9-million, which doesn’t fully cover the amount they would have received from the class size initiative grant.
“We knew that the government was looking at it, and we were anticipating that for the next school year. We didn’t realize it was going to impact us this year,” Elock explained.
The CIF was originally intended as a one-time contribution for the 2017/18 school year. It was to be put toward hiring additional teachers and support staff to better support students with complex needs.
NLPS received $736,000 from that funding program in the 2017/18 and 2018/19 school years.
The previous provincial NDP government introduced the school fee reduction grant when school fees, which were items paid for by parents, such as busing, were phased out across Alberta. Since NLPS had minimal school fees in place prior to the change, they only received $55,000 from this grant last year.
With the re-allocation of the three grants, the provincial government anticipates a total of $428-million will go toward instructional costs to keep operating funds maintained.
During the NLPS board of trustees meeting on Oct. 30, Elock explained that the province’s funding profile projections for NLPS of $68.25-million looked similar to the previous year’s at first glance.
She noted some line items changed categories, such as the infrastructure maintenance renewal, which in 2018 fell under the targeted funding for provincial initiatives at around $1.71-million. The 2019/20 projections saw it moved to the additional funding for differential cost factors section at an estimated $1.87-million.
One of the areas that saw a decrease was transportation. When compared to the 2018/19 school year projections, which were made in March 2018, there was an estimated drop of $76,000 to roughly $5.17-million. Enrolment funding was also anticipated to see a decrease from the March estimates of $1.67-million to $38.54-million for this school year.
“It shows enrolment for Alberta funded students only, and our division budget includes the provincial and federal students in it. There’s that modification,” Elock stated, adding there wasn’t a lot of changes to other areas.
NLPS is still determining how to address the shortfalls they will see as a result of the reallocation, and what that will mean for the division.
“We know we have some work to do,” noted board chair Arlene Hrynyk. “We know going forward the budget may look very different, so I think this is going to be an ongoing conversation we’re going to continue to have… That’s our first blush analysis of the budget, and we certainly know the (finance department) is diving down further to bring anything to our attention that we may not already see.”
