Prairie Rose makes rare balanced budget prediction for 2025-26

By ANNA SMITH Local Journalism Initiative on June 12, 2025.

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asmith@medicinehatnews.com

Prairie Rose Public Schools is planning for a balanced budget for the 2025-2026 school year, a milestone not seen in recent years.

Chief financial officer Ryan Boser noted that while working for the division, he can’t recall a time in which they were able to plan for a balanced budget; while the planned deficits have not always been realized as the year went on, it was normal for the school division to budget for one.

“That feels good, and obviously it’s important for the future,” said Boser. “It just gives us much more flexibility. Anytime you have a balanced budget, it gives you a lot more flexibility, whether it’s putting dollars away or, you know, spending, depending on the current year.”

The cause for this change comes in two major parts, the first being a significant enrolment increase.

“We’ve been growing over the last four to five years, we’ve had growth in our enrolments. And I think that’s a credit to the programming that’s in place for the school division,” said Boser. “I think it’s an attractive school division to be part of, and I think that’s shown just based off of the number of students that are coming to Prairie Rose and staying in Prairie Rose.”

The increased enrolment also comes from the two schools in Calgary that will be becoming part of the division, which will provide a significant and consistent number of enrolled students thanks to their more urban location where rural schools can fluctuate due to families gravitating toward urban centres.

Overall, the division is adding roughly 50 students locally, and approximately 1,615 students in the new Calgary schools to their numbers.

Another significant change comes in the form of more understanding from the province on the cost of rural schooling, allowing for the division to have a small surplus in their operations and maintenance budget.

“That’s a budget that we’ve operated at fairly large deficits in the past,” said Boser. “But Alberta Education, they added a new component to the funding manual this year just to really focus on rural school divisions and the additional costs that it takes to keep our schools maintained.”

Boser cited the amount of driving involved in being the second largest school division in Alberta by geographical area, which can make getting both maintenance staff and contractors out to schools costly and difficult.

For PRPS, this new supplement to funding meant an additional $1 million, allowing them to not only balance the operations budget, but allows for the surplus for the school year.

With this added flexibility and increased demand, the division is planning to hire 17 new Prairie Rose teachers to local schools this year, as well as looking to increase the hours of support staff available, pouring the time and funding allowed into continually improving the experience offered to their students.

“It’s very exciting for us, and anytime we have an opportunity to put more supports in our schools, we want to do that,” said Boser.