School divisions prepare budgets; public meetings planned
- Details
- Published on Thursday, February 13, 2014
By: Kate Jackman-Atkinson
myWestman.ca
On Jan. 30, the provincial government announced that they would be increasing funding for Manitoba schools for the 2014-2015 school year. Provincial funding will increase by an additional two per cent or $24.4 million, although little of that funding will be going to schools in this area.
While the province is increasing funding by 2 per cent, about 0.5 per cent of that increase is going toward debenture payments for previously undertaken capital projects.
For some divisions, the funding increase will only come in the form of special grants. The province is providing grants for three separate initiatives. The first targeted initiative is to help students get back to basic math, science and reading skills; the second is to help students explore career opportunities and gain skills training while in school, and the third is to help provide students with state of the art equipment.
In Pine Creek School Division, Secretary Treasurer Jodi Joss said that the division will be getting an increase of $15,000 in provincial funding from last year. However, this money comes from two grants tied to specific projects. Each grant is for $7,500. One is for equality education and the other is for career development. The board has yet to decide how these grants will be used.
Trustees were to vote on a draft budget on Feb 11, after which more information about the draft budget will be available.
In the Beautiful Plains School Division, they will be receiving additional funding of $125,000, or 1.5 per cent from the province. Secretary Treasurer Gord Olmstead said that the money isn’t tied to specific grants or programs.
The division is seeing increased enrollment, however, this year, enrollment was lower than expected. The enrollment increases are expected to be about two-thirds in the primary schools and one-third in the high school. They are expecting 1,608 students in the division for the 2014-2015 school year.
The school division will be asking for another 3.4 per cent from local tax payers, but since it’s a year of reassessment, the increase won’t be spread evenly across all property owners. Across the division, assessments are up by 15 per cent and the division’s mill rate will be 13.2, down from 14.7 last year.
Olmstead said that property owners with an assessment increase of 10 per cent or less won’t see any increase in their school taxes, while those who have seen their assessment increase by more than 10 per cent will see an increase.
Olmstead said that at this point, it’s unknown if the division will be receiving money for special grants. They are starting to work on possible proposals to determine which, if any, grants they will apply for.
In BPSD, public meetings regarding the budget will take place on March 3 at NACI and on March 5 at Carberry Collegiate.
In total, the province will spend $1.24 billion funding public education in the upcoming school year, up from $1.22 billion the year before. Overall funding has increased 60.9 per cent, or $469.3 million since 1999.
