This week’s provincial budget will make it a lot easier for school boards to plan for the future, say local trustees, but falls short when it comes to wages and maintenance.
The budget tabled Thursday included some $6.2 billion for education, or about 3.4 per cent ($202 million) more than the province’s 2011-12 forecast.
Schools can expect more support in the future. The budget said school boards would receive a one-per-cent hike to their base instruction and class size grants in 2012-13, followed by two-per-cent hikes in each of the next two years. All other grants would rise by two per cent for each of the next three years.
The increases work out to about $1.2 million more in funding for the Greater St. Albert Catholic Schools next year, according to projected operational funding documents from Alberta Education. The St. Albert Protestant School Board will have about $895,300 more to work with.
One per cent is better than nothing, said St. Albert Protestant School Board chair Joan Trettler, but doesn’t give school boards a lot of wriggle room.
“We don’t want to be laying people off in June and rehiring them in September,” she said.
Trettler said this budget gives school boards some much needed stability, after wild funding swings in past years have had boards making multiple budgets a year to keep up.
“We can plan a lot better when we know what’s going to happen.”
But she and Alberta School Boards Association president Jacquie Hansen said they were disappointed that the budget had no new dollars for maintenance. St. Albert’s school boards will get the same amount of cash for infrastructure maintenance next year that they did this year, according to Alberta Education.
“That is a problem,” Hansen said.
Trettler said she was pleased to see the province putting more money into special needs students, as funding for them has been frozen for three years. The budget features 22 per cent more cash for inclusive education, bringing it to $375 million. That works out to about $475,700 more for the Catholic district and $348,000 more for the Protestants, according to Alberta Education.
One big uncertainty is teachers’ wages, Trettler notes. Alberta’s teachers are currently paid based on a five-year settlement with the province, one that expires in August. Those talks are currently stalled, and could lead to local-level settlements if they are not renewed.
Budget documents show that the province is budgeting for a possible one-per-cent wage increase for teachers this year and two per cent for each of the following two years.
The budget does give boards an idea of what they’ll have to work with if a provincial settlement falls through, said Hansen, who is also a trustee for the St. Albert Catholic district.
“Overall, we are very happy that we can plan for education, and that is something we have lobbied hard for.”
The budget can be found at budget2012.alberta.ca.
