Aspen View School Division is above the provincial staffing standard after passing their 2012-2013 school year operating budget, which will run a deficit.
“The Alberta Government funds K-3 at a 17-to-one ratio, Grade 4-6 at a 23-to-one ratio, Grades 7-9 at a 25-to-one ratio, and high school at a 27-to-one ratio,” said director of business services Dave Holler. “Our board has decided they want to fund K-3 at 17-to-one, but they are going to fund Grades 4-9 at 20-to-one, and high school at 22-to-one … but we’ve stuck in a sliding scale to help out the small school.”
Holler explained the division on average is staffing high schools at a 20.5-to-one ratio.
“We’re way above the provincial standard, because we have a lot more teachers in the building,” he said. “We allocated 153.52 teaching positions, but the schools chose to carry additional staffing of 159.46.”
In terms of enrollments, Aspen View schools are losing pupils.
“We have 3,401 students this year, and are projecting we will be down to 2,978 students next year,” Holler said. “That’s an annual thing. There is no growth in these areas because there is no need for young people to stick around.”
Holler explained that since student enrollment was down, so was their Alberta Education funding.
“It’s down a bit, but of course our enrollments are down too,” he said. “The government changed up a lot of their funding for the 2012-2013 year. There are various programs they had before that they discontinued, and they’ve brought in new programming.”
Projected funding for student transportation is just more than $4 million. Plant operations and maintenance funding total almost $4 million.
“Plant operations and maintenance is going to have a slight deficit because our enrollments are down and we’ve got a lot of empty spaces in our buildings,” Holler explained. “They’re maintaining a lot of infrastructure, but we just don't have the students to fill the buildings, and the government funds us based on students.”
Holler said the reason for the deficit is the heavy load of infrastructure the school division has.
Programs that are administered out of the division office require funding too.
“The monies we take off the top to pay expenditures basically have an impact on the jurisdiction as a whole,” he said. “What we’re doing is taking the core funding and trying to figure out how much we have left to send out to the schools.
“We had $3.6 million that we took off the top, and that leaves $17 million to be deployed out to the schools.”
With three months left in the school year, Holler has already predicted site-based operating reserves.
“That's dangerous because they still have three months of school to expense,” he said. “Those number can go up and down very easily. It’s just a guideline for the board to get an idea of where we’re at in terms of school budgets for the 2012-2013 school year.”
The division is going to draw $148,660 from reserves, said Holler.
“But what we're showing the board is that at the start of the 2012-2013 school year, we're looking at just under $1 million in reserves,” he said. “They’ve got lots of room to work with. We have just under $40 million in revenues and expenses are just over $40 million, giving us a slight operating deficit.”
