No additional cash for 33 of 60 BC school districts
But, as the ministry points out, it also means no loss of money despite fewer students.
View the ministry release and background documents here. The release is titled Education Funding to Increase for Tenth Straight Year.
School officials had little to say Tuesday about the ministry's figures. David Green, president of the B.C. Association of School Business Officials, said his members were still studying the numbers because the ministry made significant changes to the funding formula this year. That includes changes to the way surpluses can be used and changes to the way money is distributed (meaning less investment interest for districts). There are also new rules about the use of the annual facilities grant (AFG), which provides $110 million between now and March 2011. Green said some of the money will now have to be used for capital projects. The labour market adjustments, which I wrote about here, have been rolled into the formula rather than being provided as a lump sum.
There were no changes in the transportation grants, he noted.
There are some positives, Green said, noting the extra $54 million for teacher salary increases and $58 million for full-day kindergarten. That has lowered the new cost pressures province-wide to $25 million to $30 million, he added. (Earlier, that figure was close to $300 million because it included wage increases and the AFG loss.)
Overall, operating grants for public schools will rise by $112 million to $4.663 billion next year. The big winner appears to be Surrey, which will get $525 million up from $511 million (because enrolment is expected to jump by more than 1,000 students). Vancouver, meanwhile, will get an increase of about half a million dollars because it's expected to lose 108 students.
Surrey board chair Laurae McNally said her district still faces a $12-million shortfall. "We're not shovelling money off a truck, let me tell you that," she said in an interview.
There is an additional $63.6 million in holdback funds, which Connie Denesiuk, president of the B.C. School Trustees' Association, said will likely boost 2010-11 funding later in the school year for some districts. The holdback fund includes money for summer learning and distance learning.
The district that's expecting the largest enrolment decline is Kamloops-Thompson with a loss of 222 students. It's followed by Campbell River (162), Vernon (156), North Vancouver (149), Cowichan Valley (149) and Qualicum (126). Why is North Van on that list? Communications manager Victoria Miles said it's demographics, with 150 fewer children expected in kindergarten next year.
Nevertheless, North Vancouver will get an extra $600,000. Miles explained it this way: "The funding formula has changed and labour settlement funding, which was previously provided as a lump sum, is now bundled into the per-pupil funding. To ease the adjustment over the short term, there will be an enrolment decline supplement for one year only which totals $782,467 (estimate for 2010-11) and there will be a $1,063,705 formula transition grant which will be phased out over the next 2 to 3 years.
"Also the preliminary grant announcement now includes estimates for Feb and May. So factors like Distributed Learning counts were not included in the December grant announcement. So we aren't comparing apples to apples."
The ministry calls it Puts and Takes.
Besides North Van, the following Metro districts are expecting declining enrolments next year, despite the addition of more full-time equivalent kindergarten students: Vancouver (108), New Westminster (87) and Delta (26). If not for full-day K, Vancouver's numbers would fall by 417.
Stikine, the smallest district, is also still shrinking - to 205 students from 222 this year. Educating those students will cost almost $5.7 million next year. Same as this year.
By Janet Steffenhagen Vancouver Sun, March 16, 2010