School District 57 received 69.7 per cent of its projected revenues and had spent 66.8 per cent of its projected expenses for its 2024-25 fiscal year as of March 31, according to documents presented at the Tuesday, May 13 meeting of the board of education.
As of the end of March, the district had received around $179.7 million in revenue and spent around $121 million in expenses.
A memo prepared by district staff states that while it might be expected that revenues and expenses would be at around 75 per cent of the amount projected by the budget nine months into the fiscal year, that’s not the case for three reasons.
The first is that funding from the Ministry of Education is not provided evenly throughout the year, with lower payments going out in July and August when schools are not operating.
There’s a similar situation with costs, as school districts’ expenses are more concentrated in the 10 months of each school year.
The third reason is that “there are significant costs which generally occur in the final quarter of the year, for example purchase of replacement computers for schools, and school purchases of learning resources from their budget reserves, in preparation for the coming year.”
All figures in the operating budget report are below their year-end projection except in one category.
Under revenues, the district had received $95,957 in tuition as of March 31 after only projecting $81,057 for the entire fiscal year.
During a presentation at the May 13 meeting, secretary-treasurer Lynda Minnabarriet noted that there are usually higher costs for substitute teachers in the last few months of the school year as there are university students available to provide coverage.
She also noted that expenses relating to the purchase of capital assets are under budget mainly due to the transition of outright purchasing computers to leasing them instead.
Another related report showed the year-to-date finances for district governance as of March 31.
As of that date, $247,126 of a budgeted $435,700 had been spent on trustee salaries and benefits as well as services and supplies. That leaves $188,574 left to spend on governance until the end of the fiscal year.
