Budget cuts and the pandemic mean Sturgeon-area students will see bigger classes and less preschool this fall.
Sturgeon, St. Albert Public, and Greater St. Albert Catholic school trustees approved their 2020-21 budgets the week of May 27. Trustees heard budget cuts, funding changes and the uncertainty around the future of the COVID-19 pandemic had made planning finances a considerable challenge.
Big cuts at Sturgeon
Sturgeon Public Schools sent out a letter May 27 following approval of its budget that warned of programming and staffing cuts to every school, especially to the preschool/early childhood program.
The cuts result from the province’s new student funding model, which has eliminated about $4.13 million from what Sturgeon gets for Program Unit Funding (PUF), which is what funds preschoolers, explained board chair Terry Jewell.
The new model funds school boards based on a three-year rolling population average instead of their actual head count in any year, Jewell continued. Sturgeon Public has received $7.3 million in transition funding this year to cover growth during the switch to the new model, but that cash goes away in two years. The board also has a $1.3-million deficit to clear up from last fall’s provincial budget cuts.
“When the smoke clears, we have to eliminate about $8.6 million from our operating budget" over three years, Jewell said. The board decided to make $5 million of these reductions in this budget.
Roughly $4 million of those cuts were made to preschool. As of this fall, families who don’t live in Sturgeon's residence area won’t qualify for pre-school.
“You can get preschool, but not from Sturgeon,” Jewell said.
“You’ll have to go through whatever your resident board is.”
Jewell said administration is still calculating the number of families affected by this decision.
The board also removed about $900,000 from instruction, which means teachers will have to squeeze about two more students on average into every Grade 4 to 12 classroom, he continued.
“It’s disappointing that we have to cut education to kids, but that’s the reality right now,” Jewell said.
Jewell said the board has already reduced head office spending by about 60 per cent in the last two years, and is not sure where it would find the remaining $3.6 million in cuts.
“I can honestly say that was the most miserable budget (I’ve done) in the whole time I’ve been on this board,” he said during the May 27 budget meeting. (Jewell has been on the board for 37 years.)
Catholic surplus
Greater St. Albert Catholic managed a $159,995 surplus with its budget.
That’s due to significant cuts the board made to district office, school support staff, and educational assistants this school year, said board chair Joe Becigneul. The board also expects to save about $800,000 next year by switching insurance providers.
“It’s going to be much more difficult at the Kindergarten level,” he said, where students should expect to see larger classes with fewer teacher’s aides.
Becigneul said board staffers did an amazing job with this year’s budget, but noted they might have to change it substantially depending on what happens with the pandemic this fall.
COVID concerns
The St. Albert, Sturgeon, and Greater St. Albert Catholic budgets all assume that regular in-school classes will resume this fall.
That’s far from certain. Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said last month that Alberta schools could reopen, partially open or stay closed this fall, depending on the state of the pandemic.
“It’s really goofy to try and figure out what’s going to happen in the three scenarios,” Jewell said, and his board has no firm idea what the latter two would mean for the budget.
“Everyone in the room is trying to guess what the government funding is going to be.”
St. Albert Public and Greater St. Albert Catholic rolled out surveys last week to ask parents and students about what steps they’d like schools to take this fall to manage the pandemic. Possible measures included masks and gloves, temperature checks, keeping two meters apart in class, attending school only on certain days, and sticking with online lessons.
St. Albert Public secretary-treasurer Michael Brenneis said about $1.5 million of the $5.2-million operating deficit he pencilled into his board’s budget is due to the pandemic. (The rest is related to instructional costs and student supports.)
“We very much will be dealing with a COVID situation in some form this September,” he said, as it’s unlikely a vaccine will be ready then.
In his budget report, Brenneis said the board could face higher staff, sanitation and insurance costs this fall due to the pandemic, which could also affect enrolment and how classes are taught.
St. Albert Catholic superintendent David Keohane said he expects to spend about $1 million this fall on pandemic-related safety measures.
“We will be making a very strong case that every employee is going to be necessary for any scenario,” he said, whether for online learning tech-support or more supervision in spread-out classrooms.
St. Albert and Sturgeon school boards have submitted reports on their budgets to Alberta Education.
