Staff with the Hastings and Prince Edward District School Board are estimating a bit of a jump in the board’s 2021/22 overall budget.
At a special meeting on Thursday night, trustees approved an operating budget of more than $215 million and a capital budget of about $31.3 million.
The operating budget is around $4.4 million or 2% higher than 2020/21, with the capital budget also up about $4 million or 14% from 2020/21.
The increased capital costs include the start of construction on the new Easthill Elementary School.
The draft budget was put together with a number of assumptions, including that COVID-19 response will continue into the fall, the low forecast enrolment numbers won’t change from what’s projected and that an online school will continue for an estimated 475 students from Kindergarten to grade 10.
More on the draft budget from the HPEDSB board meeting round up can be found below:
2021-2022 Draft budget
Board members approved the draft budget for the 2021-2022 school year representing $215,149,504 for operating expenses and $31,347,113 for capital expenses.
Education funding is intended to mirror cost structures; however, school boards have flexibility in their actual expenditures. There are restrictions on how school boards may use their funding allocation which includes that budgets must be generally balanced, certain components of funding must be spent in a specified manner, and provincial regulations and ministry memoranda must be complied with.
The draft budget is generally a status-quo budget with adjustments for enrolment changes and the continuing operation of a virtual school to support remote learning. The draft budget contains a deficit for Ministry of Education compliance purposes of $794,581 which is solely due to the planned continuation of the HPEDSB COVID-19 response and which is compliant with ministry direction and the Education Act. Ministry memo 2021:SB08 states, “[a] school board may incur an in-year deficit up to the lower of one per cent of the school board’s operating revenue or the accumulated surplus for the preceding school year, consistent with the requirements set out in Ontario Regulation 280/19.” The proposed budget deficit is approximately 0.4% of the HPEDSB operating allocation and will reduce the accumulated surplus to $6.1 million.
ASSUMPTIONS
The draft budget was built around the following underlying assumptions:
- a COVID-19 response will continue into the fall;
- the current lowered elementary enrolment will continue and the secondary enrolment is forecast to remain at about the same level;
- a virtual school from Kindergarten to Grade 10 will be offered with a planned enrolment of 356 elementary and 118 secondary students;
- funding will be as calculated by the ministry’s Electronic Financial Information System (EFIS) forms and is based on the GSN and PPF funding as announced by the ministry on May 4, 2021;
- central and local labour agreements, which include salary increases and specific funding allocations;
- number of central and department staff remain similar to 2020-2021;
- department and school budgets remain generally the same as 2020-2021;
- absence replacement costs do not increase;
- some new initiatives and cost adjustments that support student achievement, improve board operation, or reflect cost increases; and
- there is no explicit provision for a contingency amount.
