School Division preliminary budget shows increase

By Justin Seward - Lethbridge Herald on May 25, 2022.

The Lethbridge School Division released its preliminary budget last week and a couple of key numbers appear to be trending upward for next year.
The division’s 2022/2023 preliminary budget shows revenues of $135.96 million and represents approximately an $1.93 million increase from this year’s operating budget.
“It’s a good budget,” said Avice DeKelver, director of finance for the division.
“With the one-time funding, we’re able to keep things maintained (with) stability, which I think is always really important. Certainly the increases are helpful, especially in plant operations and transportation. Are they covering all the costs that we are expecting to be incurring, no, and we are going to be pulling from our reserves again as well in plant operations and maintenance and in transportation.”
The 1.44 per cent increase in funding will include $2.54 million of reserve funds.
“Alberta Education has put a 3.15 per cent cap on school division reserves for the end of the 2022/2023 school year,” as read in the release.
LSD is expected to grow from 11,670 student to 11,813 next year.
“The division was growing and then COVID happened, so then there was a decrease for 2020-2021 and 2021- 2022,” said DeKelver.
“So, it’s nice to kind of see we’re kind of now finally back to those numbers that were pre-COVID.”
DeKelver said the only down side of those last three years is the division is funded on a weighted moving average.
“It’ll take 20 per cent of the enrollment from 2020-2021 school year, 30 per cent of the estimated enrolment for 2021-2022 and 50 per cent for the enrolment for the 2022-2023,” she said.
“So when it is all said and done, how the numbers kind of fall out, is we’re being funded for 11, 058 FTEs (full-time equivalents). So for Kindergarten and Early learning, they’re at .5 FTE.”
However, LSD is projecting to have 11,287 FTEs.
DeKelver says they won’t be receiving funding for 229 FTE.
As for staffing, the division is expecting a slight increase of 4.5 FTE positions.
Support staff numbers are expected to dip 8.70 FTE positions and is a result of less funding received for Early Educations assistants with less enrollment.
Administration expenses will be maintained just shy of $4.1 million, while plant operations and maintenance funding has decreased by $489,000 for 2022-2023.
“There was a one per cent increase to the plant operations and maintenance funding. However, due to a reduction from the prior year’s COVID mitigation grant, there was an overall decrease in funding,” as read in the press release.
The transportation budget increased by $138,000 for next year and a 4.6 per cent increase in the transportation grant.
“Increased funding will support the increased costs in contract transportation services. A total of $200,000 in one-time reserves will also continue to be used due to high fuel prices,” as read in the release.
The preliminary budget will go to the board for approval on May 25 after public input form closed Monday night.