Prince George school board trustees were forced to find $5.36 million to make ends meet before giving first and second reading Tuesday night to a $123.7-million operating budget for the 2014-15 school year.
By law, school boards are required to pass balanced budgets and found themselves facing a gap in revenues, provided largely by the Ministry of Education, and projected expenses.
Most of the difference was made up by dipping into money not yet spent from past budgets and appropriating from future budgets to the tune of $3.25 million. A further $1.35 million was found by fine-tuning projected expenses based on prior year experiences, another $597,000 will come from ordering all schools and departments to cut their spending by 0.5 per cent and a remaining $157,000 was found through revenues not previously recognized in past budgets.
Increased staff wages, negotiated at the provincial level but without a requisite increase in funding from the Ministry of Education, higher utility costs and "just increases in general day-to-day costs" were cited as reasons for the shortfall by vice chair Tim Bennett.
He said the aim was to find savings without affecting day-to-day services to students.
About half the $3.25 million will come from past budget surpluses and half from future budgets. Bennett said it will mean schools will have to delay spending on large capital upgrades such as new bleachers or weight rooms.
With those moves, secretary-treasurer Allan Reed said the school district has about $3.5 million remaining from past budget surpluses and about $3.2 million remains from surplus designated for future budgets.
"Using that magnitude of surplus in a single year is a concern to our board because we recognize this is not a sustainable budgeting process," Bennett said. "But again, it's trying to maintain a high level of quality public education in the school district."
The total budget is about $1.4 million lower than that for the current school year, reflecting a projected decline in enrollment. The total number of full-time high school and elementary school students is expected to be 12,534, about 162 fewer than this year. A final count will be known at the end of September.
The decline is spread relatively equally across the school district, minimizing the impact on any one school, Bennett said and stressed that no jobs will be lost as a result of the steps taken to balance the budget. As an example of the impact of the 0.5 reduction to school spending, Bennett said that translates into $35,000 on the $7.2-million budget for Prince George Senior Secondary, the district's largest school.
Elaborating on the $1.35 million found by aligning the budget with past experience, secretary-treasurer Allan Reed said budgeted for areas like benefits and sick leave coverage have been lowered, reflecting on reduced spending on those accounts in the recent years.
With the robust job market, fewer adults are working towards completing their Grade 12 than usual, Reed added.
Board chair Sharel Warrington said the last round of school closures in 2010 put the district back onto a sustainable footing but said another round is inevitable if the trend continues.
"The funding is not there, the government is flatlining funding, expenses are going up and needs in our schools are increasing...it's not a good situation," Warrington said.
