Alberta Education announced new funding last week to make up to $20 million dollars available to school districts for buses.

The money is actually coming from future provincial budgets.

Foothills School Division superintendent Chris Fuzessy says there are still questions.

"It is good news, we need to dig into the details of what that announcement means. It looks like, to me, we're being afforded opportunity to access funding that we would be given over a ten-year window, so ten years into the future in our budget, so we're really borrowing against funding that we would receive."

He continues, "I'm not sure how that's going to pan out overall, does that mean we'll be in a further deficit as a result of being granted this ability to tap into future funding?"

He says, if they can find the buses, they should be able to add the additional students they're being mandated to carry next year.

Last spring the Alberta government changed the regulations around where school districts were required to provide busing, which, for the Foothills division means they'll need about 20 more buses.

Each bus costs about $170,000 compared to $125,000 just a few years ago.

 

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