By Angela Brown

Living Sky funding down but no planned changes

Dec 15, 2017 | 7:00 AM

The Living Sky School Division will be dealing with some reduced funding from the province since its enrollment figures were lower than what the division projected.

The division will see a $410,688 decrease in funding overall, as reported in Wednesday’s board meeting.

“We try to project as close as we can every year,” said Director of Education Brenda Vickers. “Some years we are extremely close… within a couple of students… Some years we are farther away. I think this is one of the times we were most off.”

According to Chief Financial Officer Lonny Darroch, the school division has 32 less students than projected overall for pre-Kindergarten to Grade 12. 

Vickers said the division isn’t planning any current changes this year as a result of the shortfall.

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“I wouldn’t expect schools to see anything happen right now for that,” she added. “In the future, we usually look at staffing for the fall. So if 20 students didn’t show up that we were expecting, that might affect staffing next year. But that’s no different from any year. We’d readjust then, but we wouldn’t readjust now”. 

Darroch said the division only received the information about the funding reduction last week.

“We’ll have to look at those areas where we think we can look at some cost reductions, and obviously do as much as we can,” he said. “We’re like most school divisions, 75 per cent roughly of our expenditures are on salaries. Due to the nature of the contracts, it’s tough to make changes mid-stream for school divisions.”

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow