Prairie Land Regional Division (PLRD) released its 2013 budget and the school division is expecting a balanced budget and is moving forward on two key initiatives this year.
“We’re pretty well looking at a balanced operating budget,” said Wes Neumeier, superintendent of PLRD. “Even though our J.C. Charyk renovation project wasn’t part of the initial funding announcement from Alberta Education, we’re still going to move forward on it.”
Initially, the school division had hoped Alberta Education would fund a large-scale renovation of J.C. Charyk School to accommodate a K-12 program. They are hopeful for an announcement in the fall, but decided to begin renovations over the summer.
The plan is to renovate the CTS lab, food services, and gather areas. The renovations would also be an opportunity to incorporate green technology, such as wind, solar, and biodiesal instruction.
“We’re going to modernize the program and integrate green technologies into the program,” said Neumeier.
In addition to the renovations, PLRD has set aside funding to purchase 12 new buses over the next two years.
“We’re going to have to use some reserves, but the board reviewed our needs in transportation. We have an aging fleet with significant maintenance issues and the reliability of our buses are not where we want. We’re going to, over the next two years, replace 12 of those buses,” said Neumeier.
The new initiatives are not without their cost. PLRD cut administration costs by ten per cent.
“It was a standard government policy to cut administration by ten per cent. There will be reductions in travel, professional development, and staff will be reallocated to instructional support,” said Neumeier. “A learning organization thrives on professional development. In the long run, cutting back on it reduces your capacity to be relevant.”
The creation of a balanced budget was aided by changes to how Alberta Education funds school divisions.
“Corrections to the density formula, or the equity of opportunity grant in particular brought greater recognition to the high cost of education in sparse areas. Our schools are impacted a lot by sparsity, so re-examining that made the funding coming to Prairie Land more representative of the costs incurred by us,” said Neumeier.
There is still room for improvement, however, in helping rural areas balance the books.
“We’re still encouraging the government to re-examine the Fuel Price Contingency Grant and to reinstate it and to review the density factor for transportation, because it’s still capped at half of what we need in Prairie Land,” said Neumeier.
It is expected renovations will commence once summer holidays begin at the end of June.
