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Okotoks divisions wait for education funding dollars announcement

Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announces changes to funding
Adriana LaGrange
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange, with Premier Jason Kenney, during the swearing in of cabinet at Government House in Edmonton on April 30, 2019. LaGrange announced a new funding formula for K-Grade 12 education on Feb. 18. ALBERTA GOVERNMENT/Photo

School divisions in the area have a good idea of how and when they are going to get funded for education, but they are missing one key ingredient to the equation — how much money are they going to receive from the provincial government?

Alberta Education Minister Adriana LaGrange announced the new funding formula for schools during a press conference on Feb. 18, but did not give dollar amounts, other than to say divisions will not face a reduction in funds.

“What we didn’t get were firm numbers,” said Michael Kilcommons, Christ the Redeemer Catholic Schools associate superintendent, corporate services. “But I betcha I heard three or four times that schools will receive at least as much funding as we received last year.”

CTR Catholic has a budget of approximately $103 million for 2019-20.

LaGrange announced the funding commitments will be made in March — prior to the actual school year —  rather than after the Sept. 30 enrolment count. 

Previous funding was based on a division’s enrolment. Now it will be based on “weighed moving averages” over three years.

Twenty per cent of the funding will be based enrolment for 2018-19 school year, 30 per cent on the 2019-20 school and 50 per cent based on projected enrolments of 2020-21.

Kilcommons said with CTR Catholic’s enrolment levelling off, the weighed funding formula won’t have as big an impact financially as it does on divisions with big increases in enrolment.

“Some of our communities are increasing and some of them are decreasing, but in the big picture it (enrolment) has sort of levelled off over the past two years,” Kilcommons said. “We don’t think this funding formula should have any significant impact to the good or the bad.”

The Province has also reduced the number of funding grants from 36 to 15.

Kilcommons said that will give divisions more flexibility in how it spends their money.

Drew Chipman, Foothills School Division assistant superintendent, corporate services, said the actual dollar amounts being announced is much anticipated.
"There are some great things that are in it (LaGrange’s announcement) that makes sense, reducing from 36 grants to 15 grants, for example,” Chipman said. “But until we know what the dollars are and how those grants are calculated, it’s impossible for us to talk rationally about what it means.”  

Foothills had budgeted for a $2.6 million deficit on its $97.26 million budget in June but that deficit was boosted to $4.5 million in November due to changes in the provincial funding announced in October and the division's skyrocketing insurance cost.

The Alberta government’s 2020 budget will be tabled on Feb. 27. Division administrators will learn shortly thereafter how much money it will be receiving and how it will be allocated.

None of this came as a major surprise, Kilcommons said.

“This (LaGrange’s announcement) affirmed a lot of what had been hinted at before and kind of what we have been anticipating,” he said. “We have done a lot of planning over the past couple of months based on some assurance and funding reviews (in October).”

Foothills School Division has been working on its budget with all of the stakeholders.

A public consultation will close on Feb. 28. Go to https://www.fsd38.ab.ca/view.php?action=object&id=11238&stream=News for more information.

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