Seine River expects less money than province announced

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This article was published 19/02/2024 (980 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Seine River School Division (SRSD) is counting every penny as it tries to dig out of a deficit position and faces possible tax increase and/or program and staff cuts.

The province announced more money was coming to school divisions across the province, including a 5.8 percent increase in operational funding for SRSD. Treasurer Amanda Senkowski, who discovered the accounting error when she was hired last summer that led to the $5-million shortfall, refined the numbers the province used and came back with smaller versions.

Senkowski told the board Tuesday that enrolment is expected to be 50 students fewer than the province projected for SRSD schools. When tallied up, she came back with an expected 5.4 overall increase – but with strings.

A lot of the new money is tied to new initiatives, without specific formulas that the school division can plan for in years to come.

“And so that’s another indication to me that some of these areas might be temporary in nature, or that they haven’t totally figured out what they’re looking for from us yet,” said Senkowski.

Additional special needs money, and funds for student engagement and presence were part of the announcement. Another big one is the nutrition funding that will come with more details in April, according to Senkowski.

“We did receive a four percent increase in operating support using our projected enrolment, and so it’s a 5.4 percent overall increase. That overall increase includes these new initiatives like nutrition funding, so that’s not necessarily funding that will help our current programming or our current operations, but it means that we’re going to be pivoting to do something else,” explained Senkowski to the board.