Rocky View Schools Board Chair Fiona Gilbert admits the Board of Trustees is facing some difficult decisions in the months ahead now that the provincial government has released it's 2020 budget.  

The first hard thing is trying to understand the government's new funding model that was announced earlier this month by Education Minister Adriana LaGrange.

"it's going to take us some time to unpack all that's in there because there is the new funding model that flows dollars from the province to school boards in a different structure," says Gilbert.  "So there's some work that we need to do to have a look at it."

The budget allocates $8.322 billion for school operations for the 2020-2021 school year.  However $681 million of that total is to come out of school reserves and own-source revenues.  Gilbert says the board still needs time to look at how much school reserves RVS will be able to allocate and, since "own-source revenues" is new terminology for them, to find out exactly what the government means. 

The government portion of funding stays nearly unchanged from 2019 when there was $7.218 billion.  In 2020 that number is $7.209 billion.

Rocky View received $2.8 million more for 2020 over the previous year.  In 2019 estimates were $235,180,000.  In 2020, under the new funding model, they'll receive $237,988,500.

In its budget, the government also estimates that school boards will reduce staffing levels in the next school year. That prompted Jason Schilling, the President of the Alberta Teachers Association to say that the budget creates a great deal of concern among teachers.

RVS has asked families to weigh in with their priorities in education, cost-saving measures and revenue-generating ideas in two online surveys.  The first survey was to be completed before the province released the budget and it closed last week.  Gilbert says the results will be released to the public on or about March 10th.  The second survey will be on the school division's website after that date and will ask for stakeholders' input into how RVS will balance it's budget to support students.

Gilbert says the board must first understand exactly what is in the budget and what they can, or can't do based on the parameters of the new funding model.

"I anticipate we'll be having some tough decisions.  We are anticipating our continuing growth of students so we need to balance how many kids are coming and how many dollars there are and we will make the best decisions that we can to support our students."

Rocky View must have a balanced budget submitted to the Education Department by the end of May. They'll take March and April to do internal work around schools creating their individual budgets.  The overall budget will come to the board before the end of May for public debate and approval.

Gilbert says the board remains committed to keeping everyone informed throughout the budget process.

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