By Alex McCuaig

School board budget

Rural school board looking to make up budget shortfall

Oct 28, 2019 | 5:05 PM

Medicine Hat, AB – Prairie Rose School Division will be looking at ways to make up a $1 million hole poked into its $50 million budget by the province’s move to rejig primary school funding.

The rural school division will be looking a different ways to make up the shortfall after the province announced in its budget last week that changes to funding will affect school boards starting in the 2019-2020 school year.

Prairie Rose’s secretary-treasurer, Ryan Boser, said the amalgamation of three provincial funding streams will benefit growing schools but not those whose enrolment is static.

“Certainly, this has significant impacts on Prairie Rose,” said Boser.

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He said with a provincial budget now in place, the school division will move forward to crunch their numbers to make up for the shortfall.

“Next steps will be meeting as an executive team and then ultimately with our board of trustees and developing a plan,” said Boser. “There is a couple of different option we would have. Obviously, we have some reserves so we can look at going in with a higher deficit this year and eating into some of those reserves.”

Or, Boser added, the division could look at spending or a combination of both.

Prairie Rose School Division covers rural public schools across Cypress and Forty-Mile counties as well as Redcliff.