Seine River deficit turns to surplus after $3-million miscalculation
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Seine River School Division’s (SRSD) long climb out of deficit after accounting errors discovered in the summer of 2023 is complete a year early after accounting errors discovered in late March.
The $3 million of mistakenly allocated funds for staffing at one school means SRSD is projected to end the year with a $2-million surplus.
Superintendent Colin Campbell started his job Dec. 10 and his first task was to hire a new secretary treasurer after the resignation and impending January departure date of Amanda Senkowski, who discovered the deficit errors when she started in 2023. New secretary treasurer Karastin Michalycia was hired during the budget process.
“As you can imagine it takes some time for myself who’s new, for the new secretary treasurer who’s new to dive into the financials. We’re taking over a school division that’s in a deficit recovery plan or mode, we’ll say. So it’s critical that’s top of mind for us in that process. That’s when we uncovered this miscalculation,” explained Campbell.
The board of trustees passed the $63.26-million budget with the error March 11. That budget included 27 more teachers and professional staff, plus another 35 support staff positions for the start of next school year this fall.
Taxes
It also included a flat mill rate that collected $9.26 million more with its special levy on property taxes, a 31.4 percent increase, due to higher property assessments. How much tax a property owner pays depends on the value after the province started a new $1,500 rebate program this year.
School divisions had their ability to raise taxes frozen by the previous Progressive Conservative government, whose policy was to determine a lump sum each year meant to make up any need to increase the school budgets.
“Having taxes frozen for a number of years in any organization is going to have a multiple year impact. And I think we’re still living in that right now and we will probably for the next couple years have to find ways to compensate for tax freezes for previous years,” said Campbell.
Programs and employees
The previous year, teachers and other staff were reallocated with no new hires to fill positions in schools with growing enrolment numbers.
Campbell said principals were contacted earlier this week to spread the news and help with the strong response from teachers and other staff that he said he understands will come for some. He also contacted the Seine River Teachers’ Association and Education Minister Tracy Schmidt.
“I’m really thankful for our leadership in our division, our principals and how they have responded to this news, and understanding on the one hand that we’re having a similar conversation again but quickly realizing that this is an opportunity for us to build off of a solid financial foundation to begin moving forward as a school division.
A letter to parents with the surplus news was sent out and made available online at srsd.ca Tuesday. It acknowledges the deficit reduction decisions made on staffing and programming.
Kids at Play (KAP), which gave a place for kindergarten students to stay and learn outside of their half-day class time, was cut by the school board.
“Many of us on the board who were really distraught about having to cut some of the programs that we did, it makes it hard for us as well because we didn’t want to lose those programs,” said board chair Wendy Bloomfield.
Busing fees were introduced for kids who live in town and outside the provincially funded minimum distance of 1.6 kilometres. There were 591 kids on the bus living closer than the 1.6-km limit in 2024, about half of whom were in Grade 4 or younger.
Reversing KAP and busing fees is not necessarily going to happen anytime soon, if at all.
“We can’t just reinstitute them because there’s operational implications on a long-term basis. Sure, maybe we can afford it for one year or maybe two years, but then what do we do?
“It is unfortunate but… the good part is we are out of the deficit position. We need to look at that positive as much as possible and just go forward. And if there’s opportunities down the road to make good decisions around programming, we will make it,” said Bloomfield.
Daycares have taken up the school space KAP previously occupied in several communities.
“It could be working better in some,” said Bloomfield.
“But I think it’s good that daycares were able to address the void that was there because of the loss of the KAP program for sure.”
School space is an issue, with SRSD seeking new schools in several communities. Campbell and Bloomfield said working with other institutions, municipalities or the province on childcare is something they would always be open to.
“We are more than willing to engage in that conversation because it’s very important to not only the development of the students that are the kids at that particular age, but being able to see the impact of when they’re in Grade 2, Grade 3 of having real strong daycare programs can be very beneficial long term,” said Campbell.
To avoid future accounting errors, Campbell said administration is working closely with all the leadership at schools will help.
“Probably the biggest and most important safeguard that any senior leadership can put in is making sure that when you’re looking at an overall budget that distributive leadership is critical. What I mean by that is we have layers of managers, we have layers of principals, and it’s important that they know their budget, understand their budget, are able to ask questions with the secretary treasurer and myself; and then being able to receive questions. Those questions help create accuracies in fields that would avoid the situation from happening again,” said Campbell.