Ideas That Make Cents Public Consultation
The Foothills School Division (FSD) has been able to run deficits for the last few years because we had unallocated reserve dollars.
Now, our reserve funds have been reduced and we must balance our revenues and expenditures. Our boards, like all boards, are required to present a balanced budget to the Government of Alberta.
Currently, we are projecting the need to address a deficit of approximately 3.5-million-dollars which represents close to 4% of the dollars we have available to spend.
How does the Foothills School Division spend its dollars?
Expenditures | $96,200,000 |
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Minus teacher pension contributions | $ 4,705,000 |
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Minus school buildings | $ 5,440,000 |
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Total funds available | $86,055,000 |
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How dollars were spent: |
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Certified (teachers) and staff | $ 50,053,000 | 58.2% |
Non-teaching staff | $17,957,000 | 20.9% |
Custodial (cleaning) | $4,345,000 | 5.0% |
Utilities | $1,589,000 | 1.8% |
Insurance | $2,261,000 | 2.6% |
Transportation/school buses (minus salaries, insurance and amortization) | $880,000 | 1.0% |
Amortization of Buses | $571,000 | 0.7% |
Amortization of unsupported equipment and vehicles | $151,000 | 0.2% |
Facility services (minus salaries, insurance and amortization) | $2,308,000 | 2.7% |
Technology | $520,000 | 0.6% |
School-based contracted services and supplies | $5,040,000 | 5.9% |
Administrative contracted services and supplies | $380,000 | 0.4% |
Subtotal | $86,055,000 |
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As you can see from this chart, 84% of our dollars are spent on salaries and benefits (see sections in grey).
Many of our expenditures are also outside of our control. Our insurance costs, as an example, have increased more than 400% over the last three academic years. While the government has assisted in the past with some financial support, these additional costs—and many others—require the Foothills School Division to make other reductions in order to ensure its financial solvency.
As always, our goal is to keep dollars where they belong: in classrooms.
The purpose of this public engagement is to address our budgetary needs on two fronts:
Find efficiencies to save money/cost reduction
Identify new revenue/income opportunities
The information we collect here will help inform the budget we produce in May 2022.
The engagement will remain open. Submissions will be reviewed as they are submitted.