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Foothills School Division dips into reserves for 2020-21

Division to add greater home-schooling options for upcoming school year
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Foothills School Division passed a $97.38 million budget for 2020-21

Foothills School Division will have an approximate $3.6-million deficit for its 2020-21 operations budget.

School trustees passed a $97,384,500 budget at their virtually-held public meeting on June 3. It is a deficit budget, with the $3,592,000 in arrears being covered by the division’s operation reserves.

School divisions are not allowed by the Province to have a deficit budget unless it has money to cover the shortfall in reserves.

“Reserves are a plus,” Foothills assistant superintendent-corporate services Drew Chipman told trustees at the meeting. “We certainly will be spending the bulk of dollars over the next few years as we draw down to hit that 3.15 per cent requirement the Province has given.”

Reserves will be about $5-million at the end of the 2019-20 school year.

The 2020-21 budget is about $1-million more than 2019-20.

The budget for the upcoming school year is somewhat of a moving target as COVID-19 factored into the equation.

“We don’t know what Alberta Health Services or Alberta Education is going to require,” Chipman said in an interview after the meeting. “We don’t know if there are going to be changes during the year. The Province has said there are three types of possible scenarios.”

Those scenarios are the traditional classroom setting, the present COVID-19 situation of students learning at home or a combination of those two scenarios.

“It could go in and out of those (scenarios) next year,” Chipman said. “We are not sure how that is going to work, there is a lot of unknowns.”

COVID-19 has also impacted cost to improve cleaning at schools.

The budget includes an increase of about $1.3-million in its custodial services.

That includes approximately $526,000 to have day-time custodians in every school as well as to cover cleaning supplies.

An additional $718,000 was put in the budget during the June 3 meeting to provide cleaning of all high tech surfaces every night.

High River trustee Jennifer Kristiansen said she was concerned about supplying personal protective equipment for staff and students on a daily basis.

She said not only is she concerned about being able to find the product, but also the cost.

Chipman said supplying PPE wouldn’t be financially feasible.

“If we have to supply PPE for every staff member and student that is a number that is astronomical,” Chipman said in the interview. “We are not anticipating that, but it is one of the unknowns.”

The budget does call for the recall of the just over 100 education assistants who were laid off on May 15 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The largest component of the budget is certified teaching staff at around 75 per cent of expenditures.

A highlight of the budget is providing home-based learning through the division for the first time.

“It is kind of a HUB environment which we have now for Grades 10-12, that will now become available for Grades 1-12 for parents who may want to have their kids receive online learning from home,” Chipman said. “Our preference is to have kids in the school, we think that is the best learning opportunity for kids, but with what happened this year we think there is going to be more of a demand from people to have school at home and we want to provide that option.”

School enrolment is the key component in receiving provincial funding.

There is little change from the 2019-20 enrolment. Projections for the upcoming school year has enrolment going down five students across the division.

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