Many Albertans were holding their breaths in the midst of Budget 2020, which was released last Thursday (Feb. 27). While concerns may have been festering it wasn't all that bad as the government is said to be on track to balance the budget by 2022-2023.
Within Canada, Alberta's education system continues to be one of the best-funded.
Following Budget 2020, an increase of $100 million will take operating expenses up from $8.2 billion in 2019-2020 to $8.3 billion in 2020-2021. This comes as a result of school jurisdictions being expected to use their own revenue and reserves as the government transitions into a new K-12 Funding and Assurance Model in the 2020-2021 school year. An implementation that Calgary Catholic School District says is fair in a statement to the Cochrane Eagle.
"We recognize that the government has a challenging task balancing fiscal realities with the needs of the education sector, but it does appear that they have struck a reasonable balance with this budget. While it will be difficult for us to manage our budget in this new reality, we do appreciate that there are no further scale backs in education spending. Like every other organization in Alberta, we will do our best to find further efficiencies, while delivering high-quality, faith-based education for our students."
The new funding model will remove government regulation and administrative costs, which will ultimately direct more dollars to each school division. This move aims to ensure funds are directed to classrooms and flexibility is in place when it comes to future planning.
Allocation for Program Unit Funding will assist children who require support and services and introduces a new Specialized Learning Support grant to aid the community as a whole. The number of grants will be simplified to 15 from the current 36 which will limit reporting obligations and provide more leeway to direct funding to support the needs of students.
"This government is committed to cutting unnecessary red tape by one-third to reduce costs, speed up approvals and make life better for Albertans," said Grant Hunter, associate minister of red tape reduction.
The new model is also said to provide more predictability in funding as it changes from one-year enrolment counts to a three-year average, minimizing the need for any mid-year adjustments to school budgets. School divisions will now be able to propose their finances well before the start of each school year.
Although the funding model hasn't changed in more than 15 years, Rocky View Schools (RVS) said in a statement that time is needed to sort out all of the fine print.
"Given Alberta's 2020 budget will see school boards' dollars flowing through a new funding model with a different grant structure, it will take time for Rocky View Schools' (RVS) administration to determine the impact of the budget on the services it can provide students."
In the fall of 2019 the government met with each public, separate and Francophone school division among other system partners to understand what could be done to improve future funding.
Overall, the common consensus echoed school divisions being able to foresee their funding so they could better plan for each school year.
"These changes will ensure our divisions continue to be equipped to provide our students with a world-class, high quality education," said Adriana LaGrange, Minister of education.
