NEWS FILE PHOTO Prairie Rose School Division secretary treasurer Ryan Boser, pictured in this file photo, spoke to the News about the province's new per-student funding plan.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Top administrators from three local school boards are optimistic about the province’s new funding model for K-12 education, but caution that they won’t know for sure what it means until next week’s budget provides hard numbers.
Education Minister Adriana LaGrange offered few specifics at a Tuesday press conference announcing the long-anticipated model, but said it would base per-student funding on a three-year average, rather than annual enrolment figures.
The ministry will also seek to reduce “red tape” by folding 36 grants into 15, and will provide a “targeted grant” for administration costs, as opposed to a percentage, which it says will put the bulk of funding toward classrooms.
Medicine Hat Public School Division superintendent Mark Davidson says the board and administrators are “anxiously awaiting” specific details so they can plan for the 2020-21 school year.
“Until we see the actual funding model, it’s hard to know whether the differences we see in the initial announcement produce much in the way of difference in terms of the work we do within the system,” Davidson told the News.
“We have yet to see what the grant amounts are, so we’re not really able to offer much insight into what impact it will have on system function next year.”
Ryan Boser, secretary treasurer for the Prairie Rose School Division, says the stability offered by the new per-student funding model will be “extremely helpful” for rural school boards, which suffer from chronically-declining enrolment from year to year.
“No longer will we see large funding shortfalls based on changes to enrolment from spring projections to fall actuals,” said Boser.
In other words, it will soften the blow if the board loses students from one year to the next.
The minister has vowed that overall funding for school boards will increase for the 2020-21 school year under the new model, which Boser applauded while acknowledging a $136-million hole in the 2019-2020 education budget.
“We’re only going off on what the minister has said so far. We definitely saw a decrease in overall funding for the 2019-2020 school year and that was something that we dealt with at the time,” Boser said.
He said PRSD is again prepared for a worst-case scenario in the event funding is lower than anticipated.
Davidson said the amount of red tape associated with education grants has been an issue for the province’s school boards for some time.
“The systems have long expressed concerns to government about the amount of reporting that is required, with respect to each of those funding envelopes,” he said. “The volume of the reports and frequency of them has been an issue for us for quite some time.”
Dwayne Zarichny, Medicine Hat Catholic Board of Education superintendent, says “funding certainty is going to be a significant improvement” from the previous model.
“Knowing well ahead of time what you’ll have in terms of funding next year and what that will look like should help in the planning process,” said Zarichny.
The new framework for funding students with complex needs, where they will no longer have to be assessed annually, is also promising, although it’s unknown how often they will have to be assessed, he said.
“That’s significant – both for the jurisdiction, and the students and parents themselves,” Zarichny said. “Once it’s determined that a student qualifies for funding, they’re funded and that continues on.”
This policy will provide more certainty to school boards on an annual basis, since they already know who qualifies for these funds, Zarichny added.
He says these factors ultimately depend on how the model looks in practice, in terms of the amount of money the province’s various school boards receive.
“It could bode significantly well for us or it may result in a decrease, but until we actually see what the numbers look like when they’re applied to the framework, it’s really hard to tell what type of impact it will have on our jurisdiction,” Zarichny said.
The provincial budget comes out Feb. 27.
