As school districts across the Lower Mainland struggle to balance their budgets, the Burnaby school district has once again managed to come in on budget without any major cuts to staffing or services.
Burnaby's secretary-treasurer, Greg Frank, presented trustees with the final version of the 2013/14 preliminary budget at their regular board meeting April 23. Trustees approved the more than $250 million budget for the upcoming school year, which included more than a dozen adjustments to the proposed budget drafted earlier in the year.
These adjustments include reductions in technology and phone services, PST/GST reversions, careers program supplies and services and energy management.
Frank told trustees that many of the reductions were motivated by loss of grant funding from the province, including a $2.2 million revenue loss due to a drop in enrolment of about 340 students.
This drop has forced the district to reorganize certain staff positions in order to eliminate the equivalent of seven-and-a-half fulltime positions. But no one will be laid off. Instead, the district reorganized the positions within the following groups: custodial services, district vice-principals and secondary international enrolling staff allocations. The elementary enrolling staff allocations and secondary enrolling staff allocations will "result in the districts elementary (and secondary) class size average increasing slightly," according to the preliminary budget adjustments.
"On an annual basis the board has made the decisions it needs to make to ensure we remain in a strong financial position," Frank said. "Those decisions are often difficult for the board." The district is anticipating a funding shortfall of more than $4 million for the 2013/14 school year and as in years past, they'll be allocating portions of the year-end surplus - which this year is projected at more than $4 million - to cover possible future shortfalls.
"There's no question there is a funding shortfall, it's just that we've had staff that help manage the funds," said Ron Burton, trustee and finance committee chair.
Trustees were pleased with the hard work Frank had put in to prepare the budget and quickly approved the $250,817,870 preliminary budget for the next school year.
According to Frank, Burnaby's success is dependent on making conservative estimations when it comes to planning for the future. He is projecting that the shortfalls for the next three years will increase by about $2 million in 2014/15 and about $3 million in 2015/16. The increases are still only estimates, as it stands now, the district is running on the assumption provincial funding will not increase over the next three years, therefore they'll have to deal with inflation without added money.
"When you're looking at the shortfalls as significant as we're projecting them out, it will be difficult to balance those budgets without affecting services," Frank said. "We will either need to increase funding over the median term here or reduce costs in someway."
In the meantime, trustees are hoping the next provincial government will make some changes to education funding.
"We're hoping the election will bring more money regardless of which party gets in. I think they have to address education funding," Burton said. "We're lobbying hard in this election for more money."
