School District 27 (SD27) has revealed its draft budget for the 2011/12 school year, and plans to use its reserve funds and last year's surplus to make up for a shortfall.
Secretary treasurer Bonnie Roller gave a presentation to the school board at the recent meeting, and demonstrated why the budget comes up $811,495 short.
She also explained the SD27's plan to use a projected surplus of $400,000 from the 2010/11 school year, plus $411,495 from the reserve fund account.
The board will be left with $288,505 in the reserve once those funds have been withdrawn, but Trustee Pete Penner says he doesn't like being left with a smaller buffer.
"I'm concerned, if we start dipping into the reserves. The reason we put the reserves there is that we wouldn't have to make sudden changes when the ministry decides to drop certain funding."
While it's not a good situation, he adds it avoids cutting staff and programs.
"We're just going to have to be very careful after this to ensure we can manage without that reserve."
Roller's presentation noted other secretary treasurers in the province have indicated they have already depleted their reserves, which Penner explains is a direct result of ministry cutbacks.
Rural schools are the ones in the most “dire” need of more education ministry funding, he says.
When student enrolment in schools in remote locations gets down to as few as 21 students in a single kindergarten to Grade 7 class, the ministry allots only a single teacher, but Penner notes the parents and staff want to have more.
The board voted to maintain current staffing at Big Lake Elementary School for the coming year, but this will cost SD27 $40,000, which is not included in the budget for the 2011/12 school year.
"When we closed [the school in] 70 Mile they had more kids than they have now [in schools] at Likely or Big Lake, and it doesn't seem fair to me that those people have lost their school, and now we're trying to keep [even smaller] schools open.
"But, it's a different board and decisions are made based on the personnel who were there."
With seven other rural schools in the district with low student enrolments, trustees also decided to send a letter to the education ministry to explain the current funding model doesn't work for rural schools.
The status quo budget is projected at $55,290,880 based on a drop in about 80 students for next year and roughly one teaching position (.925 FTE).
Third and final readings of the draft budget are scheduled for the June 28 board meeting.
Links to the draft budget and Roller's report can be found at www.sd27.bc.ca in the agenda of the May 31 meeting.