School Division Boards across the province are struggling to make ends meet when it comes to the 2025-2026 budget. This has prompted increases to the special levy for education on property taxes in many communities.
The previous budget for Turtle Mountain School Division was $16, 053,337. But that number has risen by over $2 million for the 2025-2026 budget set at $18,180,452. The Special Levy, which is the portion of property taxes that funds education, is projected to increase by 16.55% in this year's budget for Turtle Mountain.
"Each year balancing the budget is a challenge, but this year was difficult," says Wiesner.
In some ways you could say it was the perfect storm with rising maintenance costs and an increase in student population which prompted additional teaching and support staff. In addition to teacher salaries and benefits, there are additional financial obligations the school division board has, including contractual obligations for support staff and bus drivers.
"Each year balancing the budget is a challenge, but this year was difficult," says Grant Wiesner, TMSD Superintendent.
"The increase in provincial funding falls significantly short of covering the increased costs resulting from the provincial teacher collective agreement and increased staffing needs," shares Wiesner. "The Board received a 1.6% increase in funding in February, amounting to $108,621. This represents approximately one-eighth of the funding required to fully cover the increased costs associated with the teacher contract and the necessary staffing increases due to student population growth."
The Board did not anticipate the current situation, says Wiesner. "The 1.6% increase compared to the previous year’s funding is much lower than expected, and with the rising costs that we're seeing, contractual obligations and our growing student body, it just was not making up the difference."
"We've had a number of years when school divisions couldn't tax and last year was when school divisions could start taxing again," explains Wiesner, "and the Board has always done its best to ensure that they consider the taxpayer and what our actual costs are, and how that's going to impact families with increases to the special levy.
In TMSD 82% of their budget is contractual obligations. In addition to this the rising costs of bus fuel and maintenance, school maintenance, hydro, right down to cleaning supplies, says Wiesner, all costs have increased across the board.
"We need to maintain our school bus fleet and ensure that we're providing the best transportation service as possible,"
However, this year the TMSD Board decided to put school buses back into the budget.
For the last number of years, buses were not part of the school budget. Wiesner says they would either purchase a bus through budget surplus dollars, or they were just maintaining their fleet as it was, without the purchase of new school buses.
"We need to maintain our school bus fleet and ensure that we're providing the best transportation service as possible, so that's been added back into the budget," he explains. "But our buses are aging, and we need to get into a system where we can upgrade a couple of buses every year, just to ensure we have the safest buses on the road."
Wiesner says TMSD's primary focus for the 2025-2026 budget is to maintain the status quo when it comes to teacher-to-pupil ratios, like other divisions are doing.
TMSD has grown significantly over the last 5 years
Five years ago, TMSD had less than 1000 students enrolled in their Killarney, Boissevain, Minto, Mayfair Colony, Can Am Colony, Holmfield Colony and Wellwood Colony Schools. Now in 2025 their total student enrollment is close to 1200. "So, we have grown significantly in the last 5 years," notes Wiesner.
"We want to ensure that we have our teacher to student ratios where the Board has them set," shares Wiesner. "We feel that's the best for providing a good learning experience for our students. We also need to make sure that we're supporting students with diverse learning needs the best way we can."
The TMSD is committed to preserving current ratios of:
- 1 teacher to 18.75 students in K-4,
- 1 teacher to 19.75 students in grades 5-8, and
- 1 teacher to 21.25 students in grades 9-12
"Our hope is that as the Province is moving to developing another funding formula for school divisions, that it will be equitable and it will meet our needs, and that again it will consider places like Turtle Mountain where our schools are growing, which is an awesome thing that we are growing," shares Wiesner. "But we also have to ensure that we have the money to pay for the costs of growing."
Please listen to more with Grant Wiesner below!