St. James-Assiniboia School Division keeps 2016-17 costs in hand

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/04/2016 (3649 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For the fifth year in a row, the St. James-Assiniboia School Division will not be receiving an increase in provincial funding.

However, despite increasing costs in the division, the school board will be implementing a budget plan that will allow for a minimal tax increase for residents. The budget was passed during the  March 8 school board meeting.

This year’s budget for expenditures is just over $105.9 million, a 3.28 per cent increase from the 2015-2016 budget of more than $102.5 million. Total revenue for this year is slightly more than $107 million as compared to over $103.4 million in the previous year, a 3.49 per cent increase.

“This year the province announced a 2.55 per cent increase for their educational funding support but that amount is distributed differently for each school division across the province,” secretary-treasurer and chief financial officer Mike Friesen said. “For SJSD we have higher property assessment so the formula … awards you less money because it basically perceives the SJSD as having the ability to tax at a higher level.”

Friesen said that school divisions with a lower assessment do receive an increase in provincial funding. For SJSD, the province currently provides 54.85 per cent of its total operating revenue. The rest is received through special levies, such as household taxation.

“The school division takes a look at its operations every year and … ways of doing things in order to keep that tax percentage down, and it’s clear that we have because overall our tax rate is the second lowest in the City of Winnipeg and our overall increase this year will be the lowest or second lowest tax increase (in Winnipeg),” Friesen said.

The total increase for this year is 3.9 per cent which is $55.85 per average home or $4.65 per month. Friesen said SJSD is able to keep taxes relatively low with ongoing assessments and strategies to reduce costs in a variety of ways.

“The SJSD uses ongoing reviews and we’re looking at reducing costs where we can,” Friesen said. “Programs like the international student program that we have… brings in some overall revenue, which helps offset the costs. We’ve closed about 15 schools (over 30 years) and in some cases we’ve leased entire schools out so we receive lease revenue and we’ve input energy management systems to help control utility costs.”

Over the next five years, SJSD will spend $11.5 million throughout the division on school building maintenance. In addition, the division will be incurring costs in a number of other areas such as IT and educational programming and support.

“Our educational assistance costs are increasing,” he said. “Students that are identified from the province as having special needs, those costs are increasing as well… we have expanding needs for IT and technology, that’s an area where we’re seeing increased costs for upgrades and replacements… we had a milieu school reorganizing so that was a significant initiative, and we’re increasing literacy and numeracy teachers.”

The division also expects to incur costs from hiring support staff for new Canadians, such the Syrian refugees.

Friesen said that overall the community seems to be in support of the plan for this year.
“The response we’ve received is that the division is managing its finances in a good or excellent fashion and the feedback really has been positive,” he said.

A copy of the budget can be found at http://www.sjsd.net/