School District Gives First Two Readings to Budget
By 250 News
Tuesday, June 01, 2010 09:40 PM
Prince George, B.C.- School District 57 has given the first two readings to it’s budget for the 2010-2011 fiscal year. The budget calls for total expenditures of $126,481,736 down from $132.4 million which the Board had anticipated as expenses for the year, and down from the $129,301,892 spent last year.
In order to have a balanced budget for the year, the School District will still need to appropriate $350 thousand dollars from a small surplus.
In order to find the savings needed to balance the books for the coming year, the Board’s budget called for the cutting of 79 Full time equivalent positions, as part of the formula to achieve $6.2 million in cost savings.
As was publicized earlier, the job losses will come in the following areas:
· School organization: 22.5
· Allocations 19.4
· Custodian 6
· Administration 31
Superintendant Brian Pepper says despite all the worry and fear that there would would be too few teachers, Pepper says the ratio is one teacher to 18.14 students, not far off the mark from 5 years ago when the ratio was one to 18.63 .
As for class size, although the classes will be larger, Pepper says he is confident the numbers will hold below the Provincial allowable numbers. He says preliminary estimates indicate the class sizes will be as follows:
|
Grade
|
Provincial Limit
|
SD57 Class Estimates
|
|
Kindergarten
|
22
|
18.47
|
|
1-3
|
24
|
21.01
|
|
4-7
|
30
|
26.6
|
|
8-12
|
30
|
TBA
|
Despite all the closures and job cuts, Pepper says the worst is not over.
Yes, the books will be balanced for this year, but next year, the deficit is anticipated to be $665,831,
In 2012/2013 the deficit will be in the $1.8 million range, 2013/2014 it will be $3.2 million and in 2014/2015 will be closing in on $4 million dollars.
Superintendent Pepper says it is also expected the facility grant will be phased out and that has been included in the calculations for deficits moving forward.
Enrolment is expected to continue to decline until 2013/2014 when it will level off at about 12,500 students.
The third and final reading will be up for discussion at the Board's next meeting which is set for June 22nd in McBride.
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Posted by: fenmore on June 4 2010 6:09 PM