ATHABASCA — Unlike their counterparts in the Pembina Hills School Division, Aspen View Public Schools (AVPS) is predicting a slight increase of nine students for enrolment in the coming school year.
AVPS secretary-treasurer Aimee Hirtle explained the proposed budget during a regular meeting held in Athabasca at Whispering Hills Primary School (WHPS) May 26, noting it will be a small deficit budget to help draw down reserves as mandated by the provincial government.
"The total budgeted revenue for 2022-2023 is about $43 million, slightly higher than 2021-2022. Budgeted expenditures is about $43.5 million, which is about an increase of $35,000,” said Hirtle. “So, pretty similar to the 2021-2022 budget in the grand scheme of things.”
The overall projected deficit has decreased to $267,667 from $483,780 in the current fiscal year and an in and out line of $949,000 was added for remediation of the H.A. Kostash School (HAK) in Smoky Lake, which is being replaced with a new school on the same property.
“Because this school is being demolished, we have to recognize that that remediation will be done; it'll come off the books,” she said adding it may fall in the 2023-2024 fiscal year depending on how long construction and remediation takes.
She then pointed out the decrease to the capital maintenance renewal (CMR) funding but that there is a slight increase in the transportation grant.
“You all would be familiar with the capital maintenance renewal funding,” Hirtle said. “So, there was quite a decrease this year because of the stimulus we received over COVID. They kind of (pulled) that back a little bit.”
Trustee Dennis MacNeil noted the budget for school generated funds, funds parent councils raise, was significantly lower than the previous budget.
“When we looked at what was budgeted for 2021 and what we have budgeted for 2022, you're predicting a deficit of $352,000,” he said. “With parents being allowed back into schools and with COVID, sort of in the rear view mirror to some extent, why are we looking at a decrease in those?”
Hirtle explained the higher number was in response to the pandemic.
“Last year, because we didn't know what COVID was going to do, we kind of left our school generated at quite a high level,” she said. “We've been well under that in both the 2020-2021 and 2021-2022 school years. I didn't want it overinflated too much in terms of the revenue.”
She noted there is money budgeted for curriculum supplies but had to guess the amount as the provincial government has not specified how much it will be.
“The government has announced some funding, but we don't know what that looks like yet so, I was a little worried that the funding wouldn't be quite enough for what we want to implement,” said Hirtle.
Total projected revenue is $43,262,864, an increase of $180,497 from the previous year and the expenditures are $43,530,531, an increase of $35,616 from 2021-2022.
Early childhood services dropped 10.63 per cent from $821,359 to $734,037 due to a projected decrease in enrolment and federal government funding fell 4.43 per cent also due to projected enrolment and rate changes.
The budget does allow AVPS to maintain a 15:1 student-teacher ratio but Hirtle noted some financial risks which can impact the bottom line like rising insurance and utility rates, declining funding for infrastructure, increased transportation costs, and changes in enrolment.
On the plus side, however, several additional staffing roles of various full-time equivalents (FTE) are being budgeted for including a half time, or 0.5 FTE, wellness coordinator, a speech-language pathologist, a full-time high school success coach, two full-time First Nations, Métis, and Inuit coordinators and more.
“We are planning next year for a half time ECS (early childhood services) coordinator to kind of work with all of our early learning programs and make sure those are operating smoothly,” said Hirtle. “We’re budgeting for a half time wellness coordinator; wellness is a priority in the division and having somebody overseeing that will be good. We partner with various municipalities in our division, and we have five family school liaison workers (FSLW) that come into our schools regularly for our students.”
Supt. Neil O’Shea noted trustees should be proud of the budget and what it allows the division to do for students.
“For a division our size with about 2,500 students, this level of support in our schools for our kids, I think is quite remarkable,” he said. “And it's something that we have not cut back this year ... we've been able to continue to fund those positions. Of course, I think we always want to do better, but I think the board should be proud when they're looking at the budget.”
