SRSD insurance premiums spike unexpected, trustee

Seine River School Division will pay higher insurance premiums than expected across the division, sparking concerns over rising rates, says trustee.

Ward 3 trustee and finance committee chair Robert Rivard said the division could face a 20 percent hike in premiums for 2025, and already had to pay almost $80,000 after the Manitoba School Board Association, which manages insurance for the division, raised rates retroactively for 2024.

“We’re a little concerned about that, where they just come in and say, after the fact, ‘well, now you’re going to owe us more money,’” he said.

Along with the higher insurance rates, Rivard said MSBA told the division it needed to get an evaluation on at least three of its schools, which could cost nearly $20,000.

He said the retroactive payment wasn’t budgeted and had to come out of the surplus from the division’s general funds. He said this year’s hike also wasn’t accounted for in the budget.

“It’s a lot of costs all of a sudden that we weren’t expecting,” Rivard said, noting the school board association didn’t do enough due diligence to get it done before budgets were set.

He said the typical insurance premium is $350,000 per year. The division pays into the school board association’s pool, along with other divisions, and that money is directed to payout insurance claims whenever it’s needed for a division.

The association pointed to major insurance claims for certain schools that had fires or flooding this year as the cause for premiums jumping, Rivard said.

He said notice of the rises came too late in the year, and there was not enough communication from the association.

“I would have thought that sometime at the beginning of this year, they could have at least told us about what we were going to be having to do for 2025,” Rivard said. “I just think it was either a lack of communication on their part or they just didn’t see it as that big of an issue.”

While the extra costs won’t have an impact on service delivery, the potential for insurance to continue going up will raise questions on whether the province will offer more funding or if ratepayers will be charged more, he said.

Rivard said he will raise the concerns with the association in November at the next regional meeting.

The Manitoba School Board Association didn’t respond to The Carillon’s interview requests by deadline.