Foothills School Division is asking for assistance from the provincial government in funding as a reprieve from lower than projected enrolment numbers caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The overall net loss in enrolment is a little bit more than 200 students,” said Chris Fuzessy, Foothills School Division superintendent. “The gist of the letter is to ask Alberta Education, and probably more specifically the treasury board, to hold school division’s harmless in this context — in other words maintain to our numbers as to what our projections are.”
Division trustees voted at its Oct. 21 in favour of sending a letter to Alberta Minister Adriana LaGrange concerning the funding.
School divisions receive funding based on student enrolment on Sept. 30 of the school year.
The division’s Sept. 30 count was 7,822 — a bit less than 200 than what was projected.
“No one could have predicted this pandemic taking place,” Fuzessy said. “So we put the structures in place necessary to support the students that we projected would be here.”
Fuzessy said with the new funding formula introduced by the UCP-led provincial government for this school year — which was announced prior to COVID-19 — would also impact the school division next year.
“With the new weighted moving average, if we weren’t held harmless it would be an accumulative effect of a net loss in funding this year as well as next,” Fuzessy said.
For example, the funding model for the 2020-21 school year is 20 per cent for 2018-19, 30 present for last year and 50 per cent for the present school year.
In 2021-22, the financial dollars will be based on 20 per cent for 2019-20, 30 per cent for 2020-21 and 50 per cent for 2021-22.
Fuzessy estimated the loss of revenue is about $1-million from the division’s budget. Foothills passed a $97,384,500 budget for 2020-21 in June.
He said the enrolment numbers are lower than projected due to COVID-19. He speculated while the division has established a Hub@Home program for at-home learning, many students who might have attended the traditional class setting at the division have chosen another option.
“Our best guess is most have opted for home schooling or being part of a home-schooling network (other than Foothills),” he said.
He speculated many would come back after the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fuzessy said typically the division has accurate enrolment projections.
A five-year history shows the division has been within one percentage point of its projections to the actual enrolment account. That information was shared in the letter to the minister.
“We are demonstrating, hopefully, that we do do our due diligence in regards to our projections,” Fuzessy said.
The projections are typically done in February and March. The projections for the 2020-21 school year were finalized in April.
He added other divisions are writing letters to the minister concerning funding for this school year.
Foothills is not planning to cut staff due to the projection shortfall.
