On Tuesday, Feb. 28, students, staff, parents, and community members joined the Louis Riel School Division (LRSD) Board of Trustees and Senior Leadership Team (SLT) to learn about the draft budget for 2023-2024. It was our first opportunity to meet in person to discuss the budget since the start of the pandemic. That said, one of the lessons learned from the pandemic is the importance of leveraging online access to the conversation. 

More than 150 people registered for the hybrid event hosted by Sandy Nemeth, LRSD Board Chair, Chris Sigurdson, Vice-Chair and Jamie Rudnicki, Secretary-Treasurer. Eighty-two people joined us online and 74 were in the audience at 900 St. Mary’s Road.

The biggest challenge in designing the draft budget for 2023-2024 has been the enduring challenge of the last few years, balancing our response to the pressures we face with our ability to pay the cost of meeting those needs. The main pressures that confront us are: 

• The ongoing impacts of the pandemic on learning outcomes and the declining mental health exacerbated by the pandemic.
• Growing enrolment (We’ve seen 487 more students since September 29.)
• Inflation (The Consumer Price Index was 7.7% for 2022.)

In order to respond to these pressures, we look to the funding we receive.

The evening began with Trustee Sigurdson providing a detailed breakdown of the funding we have received (so far) for 2023-2024. We appreciate that funding this year is more predictable, in that the Manitoba government is making the one-time funding provided to school divisions in the last two years permanent. Given the impacts of the chronic underfunding that preceded the pandemic and the spiralling of pressures and needs, it is still insufficient. 

Trustee Sigurdson and Secretary-Treasurer Rudnicki then presented the draft budget for 2023-2024. We focused on the two areas of expenditures that make up the $221,591,886 budget.

When looking at the supplies and services side of the budget, it is important to note the ongoing cost of inflation, the unprecedented enrolment growth this year and the aging infrastructure that we haven’t attended to because of the inadequate and unpredictable funding over the last several years. In response to these pressures, we are proposing the following expenditures relative to supplies and services.

We then focused on the staff side of the budget. The proposed budget includes the following increases compared to the budget approved in March 2022. The projected enrolment for 2023-2024 is 16,877 students.

• 45.78 Full Time Equivalent (FTE) teachers in school
• 6.11 FTE clinical services staff 
• 65.40 FTE educational assistants 
• 5.9 FTE non-instructional support staff

The additional staffing increases we’ve made from September 2022 to February 2023 that were not budgeted for in March 2022 are included in these increases for 2023-2024. 

• 12.49 FTE teachers in schools
• 4.61 FTE clinical services staff
• 36.35 FTE educational assistants
• 1.0 FTE non-instructional support staff

Given that the proposed expenditures ($221,591,886) exceed the funding we’ve been allotted ($219,131,188), we have a problem to solve.

We've been here before, and how we’ve solved the problem for the last several years has been to cut staff and budgets related to supplies and services to maintain staff in schools. We can’t continue down this path. Not with the pressures that confront us.

Trustee Sigurdson explained that unprecedented times and pressures require an unprecedented response. For the first time in our 20-year history, we have reluctantly used our accumulated surplus to make up for the shortfall in funding. 

In January, the SLT asked to use $500,000 from our surplus to hire 6.49 teacher FTE, 4.00 EA FTE, and one social worker for the next five months. This was in addition to the 6.00 teachers, 32.35 educational assistants, 4.61 clinicians, and one support worker added between September and December 2022. These positions were paid from additional funding from the Manitoba Government after the funding was announced in February 2022.

The LRSD Board of Trustees is proposing to use $2,460,698 from our accumulated surplus to make up for the funding shortfall in 2023-2024.  Having said that, this use of accumulated surplus to make up for a shortfall in our annual funding is not sustainable and very concerning. 

Historically, we’ve set aside a surplus to respond to unexpected infrastructure needs. As a result of our International Student Program and Adult Education Program, we’ve set aside more than 3% of the operating budget and used those dollars to fund infrastructure projects to enhance the lived environment in schools, such as adding AC in classrooms, building student commons, creating maker spaces in schools, supporting renovations to daycare spaces in schools, or supporting the renovation of a football field. We shouldn’t be using our accumulated surplus to maintain the core operation. This is not sustainable.

A Draft Budget 2023-2024 Public Consultation recording is available on YouTube. Using our contact form, you can direct your questions or suggestions to trustees and the SLT. 

Christian Michalik

Superintendent