Seine River proposes $64.5-million budget with program cuts & tax hikes

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This article was published 10/03/2024 (431 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

School tax rates for homeowners in the Seine River School Division (SRSD) catchment area are set to go up 5.06 percent for this school year and six percent for 2025-26.

Those are increases of $96 and $120 per year for a home assessed at $350,000.

The final vote to pass the SRSD budget is March 12, but the public presentation to about 60 in the École Lorette Immersion gym and more streaming online Tuesday night showed the $64.5 million staff and board trustees were working with.

“The overall budget we can’t significantly change, but if the feedback from here is saying they’d like to see a little more of this and give up some here, you can still do those corrections,” said Ward 3 trustee Robert Rivard, who represents Ste. Anne, Richer and La Broquerie.

Feedback from the public will be taken on the srsd.ca website until the end of the week, according to staff. Questions on surveys handed out at the public meeting asked, “how comfortable are you with the proposed tax increase,” “what do you perceive as our most critical areas for investment…,” “are there any areas that you believe need more attention,” and “how do you envision these budget priorities impacting student success and the overall community?”

“But the reality is we’re going to have a teacher in every classroom and staff our school to the best of our ability, and that’s the biggest part our budget,” said Rivard.

“It’s more that they can give their input on what’s important to them. And basically tonight we’re hoping to get a good feedback on their comfort level on the taxation levels because that’s the big one,” he added as those who attended the meeting broke into small groups to ask questions and give feedback to administration and trustees.

Tax increases were paired with program cuts to tackle a $5.8-million accumulated deficit from accounting errors over the last two budgets discovered by secretary-treasurer Amanda Senkowski last summer. The presentation said the $62-million 2023-24 budget passed by the board last spring “did not accurately reflect many expenditures such as salary levels, supply costs ie fuel, etc.”

The school division’s plan is to get out of that deficit hole in three years.

One way it is doing that is the increased taxes. Fees of $500 per household were also added to the in-town busing option for kindergarten to Grade 4 students who get picked up 0.8 to 1.6 km from school. It will not be know how much savings that will bring in until sign-ups are done.

Another deficit-tackling move is cutting the Kids at Play Program (KAP) for kindergarten students that let them stay at school all and get more play-based instruction from trained early childhood educators. That saved $820,500 in next year’s budget.

New buses will not be purchased this year as a temporary cost reduction, saving $1 million.

No details from survey

No specific numbers were given from a community survey done, other than that there were 1,300 responses and 600 additional comments.

A summary from the school division was presented instead with headings titled “what we heard” and “what we did.”

What they said they heard was that “class size was the most important to the most amount of people.”

Senkowski told board members at their Feb. 27 meeting that she was working with the agree upon number of 333 full-time equivalent teachers while crafting the budget. That will be fewer teachers than this year, but the presentation only listed the number of all full-time staff at 678 in the 2023-24 budget.

The budget presented listed $1.5 million in anticipated saving from “professional and support” staffing.

The community survey summary also said parents were willing to pay a fee for the KAP program. Senkowski told the crowd that it was deemed not feasible to have families pay for it. The board of trustees voted to cancel KAP unless the Province pays 100 percent of the cost.

Rivard said Ministry of Education officials told the board the program will not be paid for after SRSD asked if the Province would consider paying for it as a pilot program in the division.

Rivard added that the logistics did not work unless all families with kindergarten students paid into it, and did not think that could be forced on those who would choose not to pay. He added that the social benefits of the program are why it was brought to some SRSD schools in the first place, but that he believed expansion to all schools has not shown evidence that it improved learning outcomes.

“I’ve started to receive emails already saying that people are kind of glad we’re going with a balanced approach to help all students. I mean the big talk is always about KAP. And that’s the emails I’ve been getting now: ‘yes we know we had to sacrifice KAP but it’s for the better good of the division,” said Rivard.

But the budget does have more for early literacy intervention programming, according to the survey summary.

The survey summary also said “universal band is not the preferred option for all students.” Programming alternatives are to be explored in the coming year.

And it is not only staff cuts in schools and the administrative office that are being looked at, with the presentation reading that evaluation of how many school trustees are on the board “will be examined in advance of the next election.”

Provincial funding was listed as something to look at in the survey summary, with it reading that unnumbered respondents wanted to “forego the school tax rebate.” The budget presentation read “this would be a great advocacy initiative — please speak to your local MLA.”

The slideshow in Lorette did not show an estimate of how many students there will be next year, instead showing 4,764 as of last September. “Regular education” makes up 64 percent of the budget, costing $41.55 million. Student services is 11 percent of the budget, costing $7.01 million.

Also listed were 15 schools and three off-site campus programs. The total square footage of buildings was 583,000. Maintenance makes up nine percent of the budget at $6.06 million. The adult learning centre costs $355,400.

There were 59 bus routes with 1.6 million kms travelled per year. The geographical area of SRSD’s coverage is 2,160 sq. kms. Transportation makes up seven percent of the proposed budget at $4.34 million.

The rest of the $64.5-million budget is for “fiscal and transfers” at two percent or $1.3 million, divisional administration (three percent at $2.1 million), and curriculum (three percent at $1.8 million).

Mill rates are proposed to go up to 12.65 and 13.42 the next two school years for those in school catchment areas for La Broquerie, Richer, Ste Anne, Lorette, Île des Chênes, St Adolphe, La Salle and St Norbert.

The Province has promised a 50 percent school tax rebate in its upcoming Apr. 2 budget, but has not said if that applies to tax increases or beyond next school year.