| Palliser seeking stakeholder input |
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| Local Content - Local News |
| Written by production |
| Thursday, 11 March 2010 16:49 |
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Palliser Regional Schools has gone to the public to seek input on the handling of the school budget for the upcoming year. A number of public meetings have been held in the region to outline the financial picture the school division is currently facing in light of the recent provincial budget announcement. “It’s been pretty good,” said School Superintendent Kevin Gietz about the input gleaned from the meetings. A wide variety of suggestions from one end of the spectrum to another were received at the meetings which ended Monday night. Palliser will be working over the next week or so to compile all of the information collected at the stakeholders meetings. Gietz plans to present the information to the school board on March 23. Gietz said the school division is actually in a better position than it had expected to be going into the budget announcement. “It’s not as bad as it could have been.” He said the real concern for the school division is the fact the overall grants did not see an increase. With no allocation for salary increases Palliser will have to find ways to meet these budget obligations within the current funding structure. That’s a challenge for us.” The school board has a long standing policy in place to give support staff the same pay increases as approved for CUPE staff and teachers. With this being the case, Palliser as agreed to increase all wages by the same rate as set down by the province in its negotiations with the teachers. One positive to come out of the provincial budget was changes in how funding is provided for students in kindergarten to Grade 6. In the past the funding was based on 2004-2005 enrolment numbers. Now the funding will be based on per student, which is an improvement for Palliser particularly in areas where there has been growth at the younger grade level. The school division did lose about $26,000 in funding for the Physical Activity grant and $61,000 for the high school completion program. Working with a school budget just over $62 million annually, Gietz said the lost grants don’t appear to make a big impact but they do impact programs at the schools. Adding to the challenge for Palliser is the fact it also had to tighten its budget last year resulting in less funds for technology and bus replacement. In fact the school division did not replace any buses last year which means they will have to address this in the upcoming budget. “We have technology needs too,” said Gietz. “We’ll have to look at all areas of the system for efficiencies.” Close to 80 per cent of the school division’s budget is allocated to wages and benefits. “We employ people …at the end of the day we have to look at staff levels to balance our budget.” Palliser is still waiting on the province to see if there will be a funding increase to cover the increase negotiated with the teachers. With the increase based on the average weekly index in the province the increase is an unknown factor until those figures are finalized. Terry Kirkham, Palliser secretary/treasurer, said the increase in funding for the elementary grades amounts to about $1.5 million. “Now we’re getting all the students recognized that weren’t before.” He said on the flip side much of the additional funding will be eaten up by the salary increases. |
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