It’s not quite there but the Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools’ 2016-17 budget is close to being balanced.
“Right now we are looking at a deficit of about $800,000, which is under a per cent,” said Michael Kilcommons, CTR Catholic assistant superintendent of corporate finances. “To the average citizen, you don’t say $800,000 is insignificant, but in the big picture, it’s something we can manage.”
The CTR Catholic board passed a budget of approximately $108 million Thursday.
Kilcommons added with the price of oil dropping significantly in the past 18 months, things could have been a whole lot worse.
“We’re still very happy with what the (provincial) government has done,” he said. “They have given us all of the funding that we had previously — we didn’t have any reductions.
“It didn’t quite keep pace with our increased costs, but some of those is self-imposed, such as adding an extra teacher here and there.”
Some of those self-imposed costs are a result of the opening of the K-Grade 7 St. Francis Assisi Academy in Davisburg this September.
“It is going to have really great staff to student ratios but that is expensive,” Kilcommons said. “We also think transportation will be more expensive as well.”
Sometimes a rising cost is just the price to be paid for quality teachers.
“The other cost is teachers moving up the grid,” he said. “We don’t control that, it’s part of the collective agreement.
“That is just the reality. We have a lot of young teachers that will cost us more each year.”
Teachers’ contracts expire on Aug. 31.
Negotiations are being done through the Alberta Teachers’ Association and TEBA (the Teachers’ Employer Bargaining Association), which consists of representatives from the provincial government as well as school boards.
Kilcommons stressed the $800,000 deficit is being put back into the classroom.
School divisions are not allowed to have a deficit unless they have a surplus. At present CTR Catholic has a surplus of around $7 million, approximately six per cent of its budget.
“The board will also continue to strive to maintain a 2.5 per cent accumulated surplus held in reserve to mitigate risks arising from volatility in operating revenues and expenses,” Kilcommons said.
There may also be some added expenses due to a new provincial policy regarding to online learning. In the past, CTR Catholic has given parents money for textbooks and some supplies for their children taking classes at the Centre for Learning@HOME. The division will now act as a distributor for textbooks and other resources for parents.
“Now we will have to buy them and deliver them,” Kilcommons said. “There might be some parents who decide it’s too much hassle and go with someone else or go back to homeschooling completely by themselves.
“That could change our numbers. It might be significant, we just don’t know.”
On the positive side of the ledger CTR Catholic is receiving insurance money from the 2013 flood in High River.
Kilcommons expects the budget to be balanced for the 2017-18 school year.
