Lethbridge Collegiate Institute. (Lethbridge News Now)

By David Opinko

School boards in Lethbridge dig deep into reserves to prevent layoffs

Nov 22, 2019 | 1:46 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – No teachers are being laid off in Lethbridge, at least for now.

Both the Lethbridge School Division and Holy Spirit Catholic Separate Division are pulling millions of dollars out of their reserves to offset reductions in funding from the provincial government.

When the United Conservatives unveiled their first full budget on October 24th, Finance Minister Travis Toews said some “challenging decisions” had to be made to put Alberta back on the path towards having a balanced budget.

The same amount, $8.2-billion, will be spent on K-12 education in 2019-2020, despite student enrollment being projected to grow by 2.2% each year in the near future.

Capital grants and bursaries for class sizes are being reduced as well.

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Garrett Simmons, Communications Officer for the Lethbridge School Division, says the first draft of their 2019-2020 Operating Budget was already quite conservative, so they were planning on pulling $2.4-million from their reserves.

The finalized Operating Budget indicates that the changes in provincial funding will result in a reduction of $3.1-million, or 3.88% of their total expected revenues.

As a result, the Lethbridge School Division will have to take an additional $2.1-million out of their reserves to try to maintain staffing levels.

There will be an increase of one FTE teacher in the district and a decrease of 2.5 FTE support staff members.

The Superintendent of the Holy Spirit school board says they are faced with a similar situation.

Chris Smeaton tells LNN that they will dip into their reserves to the tune of $1.3-million this year and will look to find another $200,000 in efficiencies not related to staffing levels.

As a result, Holy Spirit will have the same levels of funding this year as they did in the previous.

The UCP government is expected to introduce another budget in February or March 2020, which will reportedly include a new model for funding schools.

Representatives for both school boards said they will have to look at what this new model is before making any statements regarding staffing in 2020-2021.