Aspen View Public School Division passed a deficit budget last Thursday, but superintendent Brain LeMessurier said the board is in a good position because of their reserves.
He explained that the board has enough in reserves to sustain them for one pay period, which is one month.
LeMessurier explained this year’s deficit budget of $906,009.
“In the whole scheme of things, we have been running deficit budgets for the past three years,” he said. “In the past two years, despite the fact that we put together budgets that addressed worst-case scenarios, we have actually come in, in a surplus position.
“We are going to do that again this year,” he said. “We are prepared for the worst-case scenario and I believe that is the responsible way for us to budget.”
LeMessurier said administration wanted to plan the budget with caution in mind.
“We could be proven wrong, but the administrators have done what good administrators do around budgeting with enrollments — they are planning on the cautious side,” he said.
Aspen View is feeling the financial pressures of the provincial budget cuts with the passing of their 2013-2014 school year budget in regards to transportation.
Being a rural school division, the board has to look seriously at transportation costs.
The board decided to put $300,000 towards a fuel incentive this year for bus operators because the provincial budget opted out of giving a fuel incentive.
The board added the extra money to the budget at the last minute at the request of several trustees, to be taken from transportation reserves.
However, they are trying to reason with the provincial government.
“This past week, our board chair submitted a letter to the ministry. It was a letter that said we accept the challenges that come with economic challenge, but you have to understand that one of our biggest challenges is student transportation,” LeMessurier stated.
“We have asked for him to reconsider and when the opportunity presents itself to put more money into a fuel incentive, we hope that is sooner rather than later.”
LeMessurier explained that as a rural board, they have some unique challenges when it comes to transportation.
“Our biggest challenges moving forward will be in transportation,” LeMessurier explained. “If we can’t continue to keep the operation of student transportation viable for our operators, there is no reason for them to be in it.”
With the cuts to the provincial budget, cuts to transportation fuel incentive funding have also been made.
“The fuel incentive allowed us to be able to top up fuel compensation so we are not losing money,” he said.“By that being withdrawn, we are going to operate as a board as best we can for as long as we can, but it certainly in time is going to break us.”
Trustee Dennis MacNeil mentioned a fee to keep the option of student transportation viable.
“You cannot implement fees until we have depleted all of our transportation reserves,” LeMessurier explained. “The way we are going, that is not going to be too far in the distant future.”
LeMessurier stated there is enough money in reserves to get the board through the next school year.
He explained that gives the board time to continue to lobby the government to reinstate transportation incentives for rural school divisions.
“This budget is a reflection of very challenging student numbers, and scarcity of population of students for transportation.”
The board is thinking outside the box when it comes to rural transportation.
“We have openly said to parents that if they live in an outlying area where a bus has to go well out of their way to pick the kids up, we will talk to them about providing funding for transportation if it actually helps us in the long term,” he said.
“In a lot of cases, those parents want to haul their kids anyway.”
By the end of the upcoming school year, most of Aspen View’s schools will have drained their reserves.
LeMessurier explained that across all the schools, those with deficits and those with money in their reserves will balance out in the next school year.
“At the end of the next fiscal year, as a division there will be no reserves of in house funds,” director of business services Dave Holler said.
“Taking into account the 2013-14 budget, these are the actual surplus deficit that these schools have budgeted for.
“We are projecting that at the end of this fiscal year as a division, we will have about $647,000 in accumulated surplus,” he explained.
LeMessurier said that despite all the changes in the provincial funding, “We are still a very healthy rural board in the province, because of good management and governance.”
Aspen View is projecting a decline in student enrollments across the board.
For the 2012-2013 school year, the board had 2,950 students. But at the beginning of the 2013-2014 school year, the division is projecting enrolment of 2,822.
Aspen View is looking for ways to increase their enrollments.
“With some progressive work that we are going to do in the Smith area by continuing to offer 21st century programming around career and technology studies, extra curricular that we offer, and the international field trips, we are hoping students in other schools will see that we have something worth them coming after,” he said.
Boyle School and Edwin Parr Composite will see the most change in the amount of students next year, according to the projections. They will see a drop of 18 students if the projections are correct. Grassland School is looking at a drop of 11 students, and Smith School will see a drop of 10 students.
Landing Trail Intermediate School is looking at the same amount of students.
“We needed to develop a budget that becomes our guide for our staffing and expenditure areas for the next year,” LeMessurier said. “This is very much contingent on the number of bums in seats in the fall.”
LeMessurier said this budget is just a guide for the budget they will pass in the fall when they have their updated figures for the amount of students enrolled in Aspen View schools.
Aspen View is projecting that with declining enrollments, virtual classes will increase in popularity.
“I am thinking that as our high schools have less and less population, they are going to rely more on virtual courses,” he explained. “Teachers will actually access the planning for the course out of the virtual school. That way they can offer multiple courses in a classroom without having the burden of recreating courses.”
LeMessurier said with the increase of enrollments into virtual courses, “it is starting to really pay dividends for us.”
Aspen View prides themselves on having more teachers per students than the provincial funding percentage.
“I continue to commend the board that every year you support the smallest class sizes possible so that students can be advantaged by those smaller class sizes,” he explained. “In order to accomplish that, we have less whistles and bells and frills in our system, but that is just fine.”
A lot of Aspen View schools are operating under or near the critical minimum enrollment numbers, and the board is looking at creative ways to correct that.
“We are working very aggressively with Smith,” LeMessurier said. “They are looking at which end of the building they could take away.”
However, the municipality is looking at renting space.
“Their municipality is looking at moving into one of the classrooms and building a gym with weight training equipment,” he said.
