The South East Cornerstone Public School Division passed its budget for the 2023-24 school year at its meeting last Wednesday. The budget, which carries a total revenue of $114 million, operating expenses of $115.3 million, and capital expenses of $7.6 million had a public sector operating deficit of $1,234,542. Converted to a cash basis, this has an operating cash deficit of $2.9 million.
The deficit comes as the provincial government, which provides the majority of the funding for the school division, increased the operating grant for the school year by 0.2 percent over last year in the budget passed in March. Earlier this month, a further increase was announced, which brought it up to 1.1 percent more than the operating budget for the 2022-23 school year.
According to the presentation made during the budget talks at the division level, the funding per student has either decreased or had a minimal increase over the past eight years. The funding for the 2023-24 school year is just 3.7 percent higher than the funding in 2025-16.
The initial budgeting increase of 0.2 percent, before the announcement this month, had SECPSD looking at potentially decreasing the staffing in the division by 21.45 full-time equivalent positions. The increase did allow for the division to put some jobs back, with only 3.93 FTE teacher positions being reduced, and 8 FTE division-level support positions.
The increase of 1.1 percent over the previous year's budget also comes in the final year of the collective bargaining agreement between the provincial government and the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation, which calls for a two percent wage increase for the year.
Of the operating expenses for the division, 72 percent are for salaries and benefits, with 22 percent for goods and services. In all, 91 percent of the revenue from the school division comes in the form of grants from the provincial government.
The capital expenses within the budget do include $4.2 million from the province to start the construction of a new Pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12 school in Carlyle.
To help meet the deficit, the division stated they will be withdrawing from the surplus that has accumulated in previous years. The surplus was sitting at $29.4 million in 2015. It is expected that it will be at $11.9 million by August 31st of 2024.