Funding for Manitoba schools will increase by $67 million for the 2025-26 school year.
Background information concerning the announcement, made last week by Manitoba’s new education minister Tracy Schmidt, shows increases will vary between one per cent and almost 10 per cent for individual divisions, with the inclusion of federal nutrition funding.
For Mountain View School Division (MVSD) that means a 6.5 per cent bump to $28.1 million in provincial operating support for the coming year.
MVSD secretary-treasurer Lori Slepicka said while the announcement did not include major changes to the way support is calculated, the division did receive a much needed increase in provincial funding.
“They did continue with some of their what they call one-time funding amounts,” Slepicka said.
“So probably our biggest increase within that area were under a line that they call wage and enrollment growth redistribution. We haven’t seen a huge amount of enrolment growth so that’s just kind of a catch line for all the school divisions. So it definitely helps with the salary increases, with the contractual obligations, for sure. We also got a small amount of an increase for the nutrition program funding.”
Slepicka added while this year’s announcement does not provide all of the predicability and stability school divisions have been asking for, there were some positive steps towards that goal.
“We’re on the formula guarantee now, as well, so what that means is that your formula support won’t decrease from the prior year,” Slepicka said.
“So we have that amount which when your enrollment fluctuates or decreases a little bit, unless it takes you out of that formula guarantee, it really doesn’t really affect your formula support.”
The province says “incremental” changes to the funding formula for school divisions are being made.
“This includes calculating funding based on the best of the last three years of enrollment,” Schmidt said.
“In addition, we will be reconstituting the stakeholder advisory committee on school funding to identify further opportunities to improve the way education is funded in our province going forward.”
A complete overhaul of the funding model was announced by the former Progressive Conservative government, but was not pursued by the current administration, at least when it comes to this year’s announcement.
Schmidt vowed, however, to continue dialogue with school divisions, staff, and families to “provide stable and predictable funding” for schools. The system as it exists, with a reliance on property taxes, can make it harder for divisions in poorer areas to raise adequate funding, she said.
Read the full story in this week’s edition of the Dauphin Herald.
