River East Transcona struggles to meet tough budget targets

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This article was published 02/03/2023 (961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The River East Transcona School Division plans to borrow money to cover one-time expenses, defer maintenance projects and increase the rate of permits for the public to use facilities on evenings and weekends next year.

Division leaders and trustees, who oversee the education of more than 17,900 public school students, released the details of their $224.7-million draft budget for 2023-24 on Thursday.

Throughout an hour-long presentation, officials repeatedly stressed the pressures they are facing due to ballooning enrolment and surging inflation, as well as the board’s absence of emergency savings after years of funding shortfalls.

“Our chartered accountants recommend to us that we have approximately four per cent of our budget in surplus. That would equal $9 million. Today, we sit at zero,” said Rod Giesbrecht, chairman of the board’s finance committee, during the virtual event.

RETSD’s annual funding increased by less than one per cent in 2020-21, 2021-22, and 2022-23. This year, the sum amounts to a 6.6 per cent hike, but Giesbrecht said the board needed to receive an eight per cent increase to cover all expenses in 2023-24.

The trustee used the cost of purchasing a school bus, which has risen to $180,000 from $130,000 over the last 12 months, as one example of the challenges the board is up against.

Alongside rising fuel and utility prices, he indicated the number of students entering kindergarten with exceptional needs has doubled over the last six years and division schools have welcomed nearly 800 newcomer students since the summer.

Trustee Susan Olynik said the board will find savings by increasing the rate of school-use permits, deferring projects, including refinishing gymnasium floors, streamline dated technology and through “vacancy management, attrition and restructuring.”

RETSD’s budget proposal includes $1 million in student services supports, slated to be spent on everything from clinicians to trauma training, and 14 new teacher hires.

Olynik said the board would have liked to hire more staff, but underfunding in recent years has complicated matters.

Given the board’s surplus is nonexistent, administrators are considering borrowing to cover one-time costs related to a new student information system, upgraded transportation software, security camera upgrades and technology so RETSD can run hybrid board meetings.

Secretary-treasurer Elise Downey said the annual payment for the loan will be included in the balanced budget and it will be paid back in five years.

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Giesbrecht called the prospect of inadequate funding for 2024-25 a “bleak consideration,” and urged the province to update how it pays for K-12 schools before the next budget deliberations take place 12 months from now.

Manitoba Education was anticipated to rollout a modern formula in early 2023 to replace the existing model that has been criticized for creating inequities. Education Minister Wayne Ewasko announced the project was being postponed, citing the complexity of it, in December.

“The students of Manitoba need a new day in education funding,” Giesbrecht said Thursday. “We implore our provincial government to do what is right.”

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie

Maggie Macintosh
Education reporter

Maggie Macintosh reports on education for the Free Press. Originally from Hamilton, Ont., she first reported for the Free Press in 2017. Read more about Maggie.

Funding for the Free Press education reporter comes from the Government of Canada through the Local Journalism Initiative.

Every piece of reporting Maggie produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.