School District 70 received more funding than expected in their preliminary budget from the Ministry of Education.
After a Dec. 20 conference call with the ministry, Lindsay Cheetham, SD70 secretary treasurer, was informed of adjustments to SD70’s grant allocations.
“We got an increase of just over $274,000 from our preliminary budget,” Cheetham said at an SD70 school board meeting on Tuesday night. “Our alternate school was up 78 people from our preliminary budget...so it was a total enrolment increase from our preliminary budget of 104.813 FTE. That equated to a difference in funding of $966,000.”
An additional $110,000 was allocated to compensate for the district having higher salaries than the provincial average.
“[The ministry] take a look at salaries in the province and they come up with an average salary for everyone... and they look at districts who pay lower than that average salary or higher than that average salary, ours is actually higher than that average salary so they give us a little extra money to make up for the difference,” Cheetham said.
The district saw a decrease from their preliminary budget of $800,000 for special needs.
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