Tuesday, May 21, 2019

New funding allows for additional spending for SD52 budget

With an additional 320,000 dollars made available to School District 52, Board officials made a few modifications to their 2019-2020 budget last week, announcing the reversal of some previous cuts at last weeks SD52 Board meeting.

Trustees attending the meeting held on the fourteenth head the details of the Board of Education's amended budget for 2019-2020 with changes coming as a result of an additional $320,000 made available in funding from the province.

With the changes the Operating budget now hosts a reserve of $513,600 or 1.97% of the budget, that to be used as a contingency to address any future operational issues. It is School Board policy that the contingency funding should be maintained at between two and four percent of the operating budget.

“The Board was relieved to learn that there were additional funds available in the budget to meet student needs. The decisions made by the Board will support staff and students across the district.” -- School District 52 Board Chair James Horne

The new level of expense for the 2019-2020 financial period will now see the operating budget set at $26,466,000 with some changes to the previous plan outlined at the meeting, among the changes:

Cancelled reductions for the District Careers Teacher ($50,000) and that for the District Math Helping Teacher ($20,000)

As well SD52 announced six new additions to the Budget for the year ahead:

Early Literacy Intervention Plan $40,000
Literacy Speaker Series  $25,000
Custodial equipment (one time) $30,500
Roosevelt secretarial staffing $9,500
Staff training $45,000
PRMS Teaching staffing $100,000

The total increase in spending coming from the additional spending was $320,000

The School Board also outlined how they will move forward with additional funds allocated for Indigenous Education in the District. With staffing increases put in place for 2018-19 to be maintained along with the creation of an Aboriginal Liaison Resilience Worker position for the year ahead. The Summer Read and Plan program will be re-instated and the District Early Literacy program will be supported in order to embed Aboriginal content and ways of knowing in the program.

School trustees also reviewed a report from SD52 staff on the implications of the Report of the funding model review panel on the District.  School Board Chair will be sending a copy of the report to the Minister of Education. Parents and guardians will have an opportunity to review the report once it is made available on the SD52 website, when ready for distribution it will  be listed in the Correspondences to the Ministry of Education section of the website.

Before the school year comes to an end Prince Rupert students will see another appearance from the White Hatter, with their multi media presentation of the dangers of Social media. The visits for the spring of 2019 will be hosted by Charles Hays Secondary School, Pacific Coast School and Lax Keen Elementary.

Conrad School will be featuring a new all mural as part of a project set
for the east side school

Trustees also heard of plans for the painting of a mural on the side of Conrad Elementary School. the mural project is a collaboration between Redesign Prince Rupert and School District 52, with the highly acclaimed North Coast artist Kelli Clifton, who is also an SD52 employee working with the students on the project.

Board trustees also received a presentation from Charles Hays Secondary Vice-Principal Carla Rourke who along with students Corbin Basso and Allan Phuong outlined the nature of their participation in two provincial Student Voice events, including the first local Student Voice Event to be he hosted in Prince Rupert.

“The Board of Education and senior staff were very pleased to join the Student Voice event for lunchtime discussions. Students in our district clearly demonstrated their ability to eloquently speak out on issues that are important to them.” -- Board Chair James Horne

The local Student Voice event included students from CHSS, Pacific Coast School and Prince Rupert Middle School and was one of the largest in the province. Among the themes that the students discussed were topics related to relationship health, physical health and mental health.

The final numbers from the Pacific Northwest Science Fair were outlined as part of the Board meeting, the event which took place on April 26 & 27 hosted almost 60 participants from around the region, with students from SD52 receiving 23 awards for the work. Two Prince Rupert students were selected to attend the Canada Wide Science Fair this year.

You can review the full information release from the School District here.

For more background on items of interest from SD52 see our archive page here.


To return to the most recent blog posting of the day, click here.

No comments:

Post a Comment