The Southeast Cornerstone Public School division held its final board meeting of the school year earlier this month, as the division discussed some of its finances from the 2025-26 school year.
Shelley Toth, the division’s superintendent of division services and chief financial officer, delivered some of the details to Cornerstone’s board members, laying out the specific figures for the year.
Frontline operations budget showed a total revenue of $130.3 million and operating expenses of $128.3 million. Despite those numbers, the division says there's more to the story, and this time around, they'll actually be filing a deficit. That will be to the tune of around $1.5 million, which is less than they have filed in previous years.
The division says that deficits have become a familiar story across the province, with some regions having little surplus to fall back on, as SECPSD is seeing its surplus whittle away. In the report for the 2025-26 budget, the available surplus was at $32.30 million heading into the 2017-18 school year, and now sits at $13.80 million coming into the new school year.
Some notable fluctuations in their finances include the new school being built in Carlyle, which added $2 million to the surplus from a $6 million capital grant. The expenses of that building will be costed once it is completed.
The division also saw an increase of nearly 21 full-time equivalent (FTE) teaching positions, along with just over 31 more FTE education assistants.
The majority of the $128.3 million in expenditures comes from salaries and benefits, taking up $94.7 million, or 74 per cent of the total budget. SECPSD employs people who fill 1,157.29 FTE positions, with about 526 of them being teachers.
Goods and services came in at $26 million, or about 20 per cent of the total expenditures, with amortization on the lower end at $7.3 million and debt service at a low 0.4 million, less than half a per cent in the overall expenditure file.
Other major capital expenditures also included $1.5 million for school buses and another $1.15 million for computer hardware and equipment to address the mandate to refresh six schools, along with adding to network, equipment and access point upgrades.
$130,000 goes towards fleet vehicle replacements for vehicles other than buses, and furniture and general equipment purchases will add another $153,000 to the capital expenditures.
Toth’s report noted that the $1,507,356 anticipated deficit budget includes around $42,000 in additional funds for future employee benefits.