Powell River’s school district will see a slight decrease in funding from the provincial government for its 2012-2013 budget.
Steve Hopkins, secretary treasurer for School District 47, said there will be a $300,000 decrease in the budget, roughly a 1.5 per cent decline in funds. He added enrolment decreases are a factor.
Hopkins also said the school district expects there will be 70 to 100 fewer students in the next school year. “The rate of our decline of enrolment is greater than the rate of decline in funding,” he said.
Hopkins explained the enrolment numbers make a difference in the money the school board receives. The estimated enrolment for Powell River is 2,097. Based on that, the estimated funding will be $21,184,923. Because more and more districts are in funding protection every year, the $5 billion funding from the provincial government has to be stretched.
Funding protection is a line of funding formula implemented by the provincial government about four or five years ago, Hopkins explained. Because of decreasing enrolment in schools, the school district is eligible for less and less money each year.
“That pie is just getting smaller and smaller,” he said. “Regardless of some of the changes they’ve got in the funding formula, funding protection is still in but expect it to be the same, no less. Instead of 100 per cent you can do no worse than 98.5 per cent of the year before. So it’s going to force the districts to start to catch up to the formula.
“But if you look at equity it doesn’t make sense that some districts are getting as much as they are,” he added. “Fast forward to some of these table amounts and you’ll see we’re indeed at 98.5 per cent of the current year’s funding but our budget will be based on next year.”
The Learning Improvement Fund will amount to about $270,000. The provincial government is increasing the fund by $60 million in 2012-2013 due to province-wide operational savings of $37 million resulting from the three-day teachers’ strike in March. All of the strike savings will remain with school districts, with $30 million being applied to the fund and the remaining $7 million to be used by school boards for educational priorities in their respective districts.
Community Learning Includes Nutrition and Knowledge (LINK) program will provide the school district with about $192,146. Community LINK provides funds for school districts to provide services like breakfast and lunch programs, school-based support workers and counselling for at-risk youth and children.
For the maintenance of facilities, the school district will receive $578,118 from the annual facility grant.
Hopkins said with the budget’s small decline the school board might have to make some changes. “I think we’ll take a different approach to our budgeting this year and go through some of these details because each year we’re going to start to decline.”
Hopkins said he expects the 2012-2013 budget to be presented and passed by the board at the June 19 meeting.
