By Floyd Martens
MVSD Board Chair

“Budgets expose your priorities.”

If this sounds familiar, it was the opening words of a Mountain View Matters one year ago. At the time the annual funding announcement from the provincial government had been release. It included restrictions on locally-generated funding through property taxes. Instead, of boards being able to set mill rates, an offset grant was sent to school divisions equal to what would be a two per cent tax increase. Rebate checks were sent to ratepayers.

This change in local education funding was coupled with minor increases in provincial funding. It made for difficult budgeting as resources did not keep up with increased expenses.

This provided an even greater need for your local school board to prioritize what matters most.

Fiscal pressures make it imperative to do so.

That was a year ago. What a year it has been. The budget was completed before the release of the K-12 Education Review and prior to the tabling of a piece of legislation infamously known as – Bill 64. So much has happened in the past 12 months.

A year later, the board is in a similar place. boards are still here, thanks to the voice of our communities.

Limitations continue for boards to raise revenue through taxation. However, this year the provincial government has made greater investments to help address some of the budget challenges board’s face, and we appreciate the efforts of government to recognize and address these challenges.

Two one-time investments were provided to school boards to address contractual and inflationary pressures. One to address the current year and one for the upcoming year. These investments are both outside of the current funding formula. The formula provides individual divisions their share of the overall provincial education funding, yet only 5.6 per cent of the $118 million dollars of education funding announced this month will flow through this formula.

However, a new funding formula is in the process of being developed. This new model is intended to simplify the current formula which has increasingly become more complex. The new formula is in the process of being developed and is at least a year away from being implemented.

What is also different this year is Manitoba has a new bargaining model for teacher contracts. The legislation, Bill 45, was passed and proclaimed into law.

The Manitoba School Boards Association will become the bargaining agent for all school divisions and will bargain with all public school teachers in the province. Current Teacher collective agreements come to an end at the end of June. The next contract will be settled through this new bargaining model.

With all that said, the focus of your board remains on determining which areas should be invested in. Which areas matter most when it comes to addressing the educational needs of our students.

Since the announcement, at the beginning of this month, the board is examining the needs of the division. A couple of pressures are squeezing the available resources. As you will know, inflationary pressures are taking their toll. The provincial government recognized this, but with cost of living increases in the 3.3 per cent range, everything from utilities, fuel and insurance have impacted what is needed for the next school year. Not to mention the pressure on staff salaries.

The other pressure is the needs of our aging infrastructure. Maintaining our 16 schools requires investment. While major repairs or replace of systems is supported through government’s central services, aging systems do impact our budgets as we continue to maintain systems that have reached their life expectancy.

As the board prepares the budget for the 2022-23 school year, we need your input, as our draft budget identifies a shortfall of nearly $400,000.

Taxation is no longer an option so decisions on eliminating this shortfall require discussion and debate on school and division priorities.

A draft budget will be presented at an online meeting, Mar. 7. The link and information can be found at www.mvsd.ca.

This will be an opportunity for the board to provide current information on what the funding announcement means for Mountain View School Division, as well as an opportunity for the board to hear from our community in terms of your priorities for next year’s budget.

Hope to see you there.