No news is good news for Foothills school divisions when it comes to education and the Alberta budget.
“As far as the education side goes, we have appeared to have dodged any major bullets,” said Michael Kilcommons, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools associate superintendent, corporate services. “It was really a no news budget. Things didn’t change a whole lot. They (the Province) said they are not going to increase any taxes, and not reduce any grants.”
NDP Alberta Finance Minister Joe Ceci presented a $54.9 billion budget on March 18, of which $8.2 billion is earmarked for operations cost for education. That’s an increase of approximately $300-million from last year.
“This is certainly not bad news,” Kilcommons said. “We’re educators, we always want more money, but we were hoping for flat budgeting, because the reality is our province isn’t in a great financial position and we are thankful there are no cuts. We will work with what we are getting.”
The budget will finance student growth, not the rate of inflation.
CTR-Catholic has a budget of around $106-million for the 2016-17 school year. It will submit its budget for next school year at the end of May.
School boards receive approximately $7,000 per full-time student (that figure would be lower for the more than 3,000 home-school students with CTR Catholic).
Drew Chipman, Foothills School Division assistant superintendent-corporate services, echoed Kilcommons in that he was pleased there were no cuts to education.
“First blush is there is no change to most of the grants we are receiving and they will fund for student growth, which is good news but it is what we were expecting,” Chipman said. “I would agree that with the economy we (Alberta) are having, it its as good as we could have hoped for.”
Parents did get a break. The Province reinforced it will set aside approximately $50-million to cover a portion of students fees, such as textbooks, busing from regulated distances, photocopying and others.
“We still haven’t received clarification as to what the changes to the students fees will mean,” Chipman said.
Albertans school boards were on the hook for the Province’s carbon tax affective Jan. 1.
“The Province was clear that we are not exempt from the carbon tax,” Chipman said. “It’s something that we budgeted for this year ($100,000) and we will have to budget for again next year.”
An unknown is the present negotiations between teachers and Province, along with representatives from Alberta school boards.
“It has been reiterated that whatever costs come out of that central bargaining the government should absorb, so it shouldn’t hit us,” Kilcommons said. “We don’t have extra cash coming in with this new provincial budget, but the government would cover any increases to the staffing portion.”
For other items not on the central bargaining table, such as professional development, it would come from the divisions’ budget.
