Sunrise SD boosts budget as potential population boom on horizon

The Sunrise School Division is bringing in 16.2 percent more in school taxes to fund higher teacher and support salaries, new school buses and more next school year.

The budget is up $5.3 million or 6.4 percent to a total of $88.2 million.

Board Chair Paul Magnan said the goal for trustees and administration was to find a balance between investment and controlling taxes.

“Making sure schools are funded properly, and then making sure that we’re being responsible to our ratepayer,” said Magnan.

“We never want to go ahead and jump (taxes) in one year and little in the next year. We kind of want to be consistent.”

The biggest increases in spending are for salaries, which make up by far the majority of the budget. That includes regular instruction getting a $1.63-million or 3.7 percent boost to keep class sizes down and increase teacher pay, and student support services getting a $1.8-million or 11.6 percent increase.

Student support mostly includes educational assistants (EAs), but also specialized staff like counsellors or literacy support. Sunrise is spending $17.4 million on support next school year.

“We’re also hearing like everyone else, about mental health concerns and the delivery of supports for mental health. So that’s why you see supports going into student services,” said Magnan.

Tax bills go up and down

The amount of tax dollars is up significantly to pay for these increases, but not everyone will see their tax bill go up.

The Province has changed the residential rebate from 50 percent of the school tax bill, to a flat rate of up to $1,500 for everyone. That means people whose homes were assessed at over $500,000 are still paying less than they were last year. Higher valued residential properties are paying more, significantly more for higher valued homes.

Assessments are up for most people, with total assessment including new homes and higher values up 20.2 percent over last year. But as long as that value is below $279,735, the school tax bill should be $0 with a slightly lowered mill rate of 11.916.

Farms are still getting the 50 percent rebate.

Sunrise raised taxes collected after finding out the province is giving it 1.2 percent more funding next school year. It is 1.3 percent when including federal nutrition funding.

“I think $75,000 of $411,000 was nutrition funding… That really left the school division with $336,000 in discretionary funds to apply against contractual increases, and the rising costs of gas and insurance, and inflation, which really wasn’t very much at all,” said superintendent Trevor Reid.

The region is experiencing steady growth overall, with class sizes kept within provincial guidelines after hiring two new teacher positions. There are an estimated 4,793 students going to Sunrise schools next year.

But Reid expects a boom coming soon, especially in the RM of Springfield bedroom communities close to Winnipeg. He said the school division contracted a report that pointed to big potential growth in places like Oakbank, Dugald and Anola.

“A lot of that is I think right now contingent on the RM of Springfield getting a water treatment plant in place. And we’re just sort of sitting back and seeing when that happens because we think when that happens there’s going to be some rapid growth in that area,” said Reid.

Magnan said the school board has a committe working with administration and the RM that is looking at growth in the Springfield area, and the construction that could soon need to happen for the influx of students.

“Have we informed the Province that we’re going to see growth there in the next little while? Yeah, we are,” said Magnan.

The division is still mostly a rural one for now, though.

That means there are 92 bus routes to schools from Oakbank and Dugald in the west, to Whitemouth in the east, and Powerview in the north.

Sunrise has seven new buses in its budget for this year after buying the same number last year, and is increasing its transportation budget by 7.8 percent to $6.8 million.

“We have a huge bus fleet and we travel… millions of miles of travel and busing kids, and we’re pretty happy [with] the work that’s going on there, but when we’re driving on gravel road and dirt roads, the push is our fleet is getting old.

“So we’re fortunate right now that we’re in the position that we’re trying to refurbish our fleet, but… it’s still a small percentage of our bus fleet,” said Reid.

Those buses cover 7,181 square kilometres and go to 19 schools. There are seven english schools, four english/french immersion schools, two english/ukrainian bilingual schools, and six hutterian schools.