The Foothills School Division has released their budget for next year (2019/2020).

It wasn't easy though, with Provincial Governments transitioning, school boards are being left in the dark as far as funding goes.

At least for now.

The FSD's Assistant Superintendent of Corporate Services, Drew Chipman says this year was tough for school boards to create budgets province wide, as no word has been released on the Alberta Government plans for Education funding.

Chipman says he was able to reach out to contacts in the Provincial Education Department to get a good idea of what's being scrapped, and what's not.

"What we did is look at our current years budget, and we extrapolated that moving forward." He says "I have a number of contacts in the department, that's what you get when you've been around for as long as I have, and I've certainly gotten a feeling from them as to what they would expect, and what we could expect from them."

While there are going to be a few changes, only a couple of things were excluded.

"Really there's just a couple of changes. We understand that the Nutrition Grant may not be available next year so we did not include that, as well as some classroom improvement funding which is just under a million dollars. We've received that each of the last two years and it was a one time grant, so it's not something that the Government has committed too moving forward."

While they were able to create a budget they see working for the next months, Chipman says they will be running a deficit.

According to Chipman, the School Board's expenses are predicted to be $97-million, while revenues are only expected to be at $94.5-million, so the deficit will run about $2.6-million.

"We're in a position where we have just over 10 million dollars in reserves. We believe that we can actually operate with a little less in reserve levels so we're running a deficit this year, and we've run a deficit over the past couple of years. So we're able to put dollars back into the classroom."

Modernization of the Blackie School is still a question mark heading into this budget though, as the government has yet to approve or deny the plan.

"Blackie modernization is a good question. That's actually one that we've asked the Government for funding on it in our capital plan." Chipman explains "So the Government provides funding for capital improvements and that's one of the projects that we're unaware of what's happening with until the Government makes a decision as to what capital projects they'll be funding. Those usually come out with the budget release, so while we have that as our number one priority, we still haven't gotten approval yet from the Province."

Chipman says they will have to wait until the Fall, and either way they'll update the budget if they have to.

"It is from a capital project perspective and from a budget perspective. We do a budget update in the Fall. As of September 30th our enrollments are finalized, and then we have two months to provide the Government with an updated budget report. So hopefully we have some dollars announced and we have a firm understanding of what our revenues are going to be. If we have to make adjustments we can do that in the Fall."

Chipman says despite political challenges they're remaining positive.

"We're in a pretty good position here in the Foothills School Division. The board's been very prudent in making sure they have the dollars that they need to run the programs they need. They're able to do things like providing a program where schools and classrooms can apply for additional money to enhance what's going on in the classroom."

He says the board is looking forward to next year.

 

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