Secretary treasurer Leanne Dulle presents the 2024-25 Public School Division budget to board members on Tuesday.--NEWS PHOTO BRENDAN MILLER
bmiller@medicinehatnews.com
Members of the Medicine Hat Public School board voted to approve the division’s 2024-25 budget of $94.436 million next year, projecting a deficit of $800,000.
It’s the second planned year of reductions as the division works toward a balanced budget for the 2025-26 school year. Last year the division ran a deficit of more than $2.2 million and both years have been funded by operation reserves.
Superintendent Mark Davidson says the division implemented a two-year planned deficit to allow needed staffing cutbacks. The division is expected to lose 13 teachers and five education assistants through attrition and retirements and will only hire one full-time teacher next year.
“The plan has worked for us,” said Davidson. “So the board will receive, this time next year, a balanced budget for the 2026-26 school year.”
“We knew that we were going to have to reduce staff,” explained secretary treasurer Leanne Dulle. “Because that’s the largest component of our spending is through salaries and benefits. So we made a plan to have two years worth of deficits.
“It’s not a favourable, happy thing to have to find savings when it’s staff reduction, but we have to get to a point of what we can afford in our reserves, and this year it’s $800,000.”
The division says the other main factors affecting the budget include changes to the student funding framework and the reduction of funding from pandemic support programs as well as a reduction of more than 330 students since 2019.
Per-student instruction grants have not changed this year and inflationary pressures have created challenges to address rising costs.
Fewer educators planned to balance budget
Next year the division is expecting 30 more students to enrol in public schools and the plan is to hire one additional full-time support staff, however there will be an overall loss of 20 teachers, educational assistants and support staff positions.
Current jobs are not expected to be cut as the division is expecting to lose 21 staff, including 12 teachers, to attrition and retirement.
Staff reduction is part of the division’s two-year plan to balance its budget. Salaries and benefits for staff account for the largest component of the division’s total budget expenses at nearly 80 per cent.
Davidson says the division’s extended budget plans provided a longer time period to achieve staff reductions without cutting jobs.
“Those reductions were made because people chose to retire, they moved away and made the kinds of decisions that people make in life, as opposed to having to let people go.”
“If we did try to realize the reduction in costs, which is a reduction in staff in one year, it would have been very significant,” says Dulle. “So we wanted to send that over two years. Then you get the ability to spread it over two years worth of retirement, not just one.”
The division will experience an increase of more than $1.1 million toward staffing expenses and save more than $1.7 million for the reduction of 20 staff. Davidson says he expects staff reductions to impact average classroom sizes but will remain below the provincial average.
“We feel that the very modest changes we’ll see in class sizes are manageable,” says Davidson.
Transportation
Next year’s budget will see an expected increase of $499,000 to transportation costs to 3.588 million.
Davidson points to rising costs in maintenance, parts and fuel and as well school bus driver retention.
“We fully expected that we were going to see significantly rising costs in transportation, due to the previously identified inflationary costs on fuel, the cost of replacement buses and also the cost of staffing,” says Davidson.
The division is expected to receive $3.539 million in transportation funding and grants.
“So while we have more revenue coming in, a lot of that is to address an increased number of students who qualify for transportation,” explains Davidson. “But it doesn’t fully address the rising cost of the service that we provide to those students.”
In March 2023 the province reduced its distance requirements to access school bus transportation from a 2.4-kilometre walking distance to one kilometre for elementary school students and two kilometres for students Grade 7-12.
