School board trustees approved a preliminary $165.7 million budget for the 2018-19 school year that will maintain the same levels of service of students they have received in the past and feature an $800,000 in additional support for student learning.
"That's a very important good news item," trustee Sharel Warrington said during a brief with local media earlier in the day.
Warrington added that with additional funding under the provincial government's classroom enhancement agreement, the school district is now in full compliance with the restored language under the teachers' collective agreement.
But she also noted that the Ministry of Education has held back funding on several fronts, largely inflationary matters like increased costs of utilities and transportation, as well as salary increases for non-union staff and the new Employer Health Tax that will replace the Medical Services Premium, forcing the school district to make up the difference.
As a consequence, while the district's operating expenses are to add up to $139.8 million, operating revenue will amount to $136.3 million for a $3.5-million shortfall with the difference coming out of previous years surpluses.
"It's really important that we acknowledge that funding for these expenses needs to be sustained and supported from within our existing budget and without additional money from the ministry and that is a challenge," Warrington said. "However, in spite of those challenges this is a very good news budget because it's balanced budget.
In all, $5 million will come out of that fund with $4 million allocated for school-based decisions, $500,000 to the school district's commitment to the new Kelly Road Secondary School, $199,722 to education plan implementation, $108,074 to energy conservation, $101,427 to community use, $49,566 to student support services digitization and $20,000 to asbestos management.
As for the $800,000, that will come out of "sustainable" ongoing operating funding and will be spread over 13 items including support for recruitment of substitute teachers and casual support staff, hiring of four vice-principals, support for a full-time fine arts teacher, additon of three spare board custodians, increased travel budgets for schools in Mackenzie, McBride and Valemount and funding to applied design, skills and technologies instruction at the John McInnis Centre industrial education centre and through the Canfor trades trailer.
Prince George and District Teachers Association president Joanne Hapke welcomed how the budget was presented.
"I like the fact that they indicated fairly clearly where the extra dollars are going to go and I will say that we advocated for some of those opportunities as well," Hapke said. "But we also advocated for more teachers and from what I can tell, there's only one more teacher that is being added directly in by the school board.
"They stated that there is money within the individual schools to add extra teachers if they want but we were looking for (more teachers) from the school district. They do have surpluses at the school district level that could have and should have been spent to bring in more teachers to support students."
The budget is based on a projected enrollment of 13,175 full-time equivalent students, up slightly from 13,140 accounted for in September 2017.
