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Light of Christ sees more funding for higher enrolment

Dec 22, 2017 | 10:00 AM

The Light of Christ Catholic School Division finished 2017 with some good news – an increase in provincial funding of just over $300,000 to reflect its higher enrolment.

Chief financial officer Jordan Kist said at Tuesday’s board meeting the division made a “conservative” enrolment projection for the current school year, and its actual registered enrolment numbers at the end of September came in higher, which translates into more per-student funding dollars from the province.  

“Our actual enrolment increased by 47 students, full-time equivalencies, roughly,” he said. “It was fairly close, but we actually had more students than we had anticipated in January of 2017.”

Kist said the division projected about 1,900 students and came in with 1,948 pupils in the actual enrolment numbers for the division overall. 

He said the division also had slightly more students enrolled at the end of September 2017, compared to the actual numbers at the same time last year.

When eyeing the $300,000 increase, Kist said it’s important to keep things in perspective related to the added funding since the division, similar to other divisions in the province, was previously impacted by provincial budget cuts earlier in the year. So even though Light of Christ is experiencing some additional funding now, the overall loss has been much greater than the gain.         

“Our funding year-over-year, from school year 2016-17 to 2017-18, has decreased by over five per cent, just over $1-million,” Kist said. “We saw an increase in over $300,000, but year-over-year saw a decrease of $1-million.”

The chief financial officer said essentially the added funding to reflect the increase in enrolment is better known as an enrolment adjustment, which happens every year. If the division had projected higher than the actual numbers came in, it would have ended up with a decrease in funding.

Director of Education Cory Rideout said the enrolment increase was pretty well spread out among all the grades and there weren’t any noticeable increases or decreases in any grade level specifically.

“You try to make the best staffing decisions you can, based on the information you have at the beginning of the year,” he added. “You are a bit of a slave to the budget to a certain extent, so a lot of planning and consultation happens to get ready for that. We’re very confident with the staffing we have in place and the resources allocated for this year.” 

 

angela.brown@jpbg.ca

Twitter: @battlefordsNOW