School District 5 trustees are rolling up their sleeves and digging in for a big budget deficit battle between now and the end of June, but trustees are optimistic they can eliminate the close to $1 million deficit before the deadline.

The Board gave second reading to its 2010 – 2011 operational budget at its last meeting in Elkford May 11 even though it had a deficit of more than $900,000.

But Board Chairman Frank Lento says he’s confident the deficit will be eliminated by the time of the next Board meeting in Cranbrook June 8. “We just have a couple more things to deal with and we should know what we will be doing.”

Lento says the board will be meeting before its regular committee meetings May 18 and should have more to say then about what it’s going to do to eliminate the deficit. School closures, teacher layoffs and program cuts are not being considered, he says.

The Board of Education chairman says the shortfall results from general inflationary increases to operational expenses including higher MSP premiums, utility rates, staff pension and benefit increases, contractual salary increases, as well as the staffing time required to meet the Ministry’s enhanced reporting requirements.

“It’s a simple formula: the revenue we receive from government is less than what’s needed to fund government-mandated educational programs,” explains Lento. “We have a lean and efficient District. We have an excellent management team.”

Lento also points out that some of the cost pressures actually result from the government’s own per-student funding formula.

“Per-pupil funding works fine in theory but it has a fundamental flaw for large rural districts. If you lose a student out of a classroom, for example, you lose $6,740 in funding. But you still have to provide a classroom space for the rest of the students. You still have to heat and light the classroom. You still have to pay for teaching staff and supplies for that classroom. The only thing that’s changed is that you have less money coming in to pay for those fixed expenses.”

South Country Trustee Shaun Damstrom agrees and believes that addressing funding shortfalls requires educating the school community about the challenges SD5 faces.

“I think parents can sometimes get confused when they hear government say that education funding has increased. The reality is over the past few years that extra money goes to salary increases negotiated by the provincial government. There is little or no new funding to offset the rising cost of providing education services and expanded government mandates.”

Taken as a percentage of the provincial budget, education funding fell from approximately 20 per cent of the provincial budget in 2000-01 to 15 per cent this year.

To address the budget crisis in education, the British Columbia School Trustee Association (BCSTA) passed a resolution last month at its Annual General Meeting urging the government to “provide adequate, predictable and sustainable funding that includes additional financial support for newly mandated initiatives and existing unfunded liabilities.”

Cranbrook Trustee Chris Ellis was an attendee at the BCSTA General Meeting and supports the efforts to address the structural shortfalls in education funding.

“One recommendation was to have the provincial government establish a Royal Commission to determine what exactly is adequate funding,” explained Ellis. “I think this is a good place to start. If we are seeing Boards across the province facing these challenges year after year, there is a systemic problem that needs to be fixed.”

Lento stresses that the Board is committed to protecting budget areas that have a direct impact on student learning. “We’ve solicited and received feedback from District staff and parents. We continue to look for reductions in the area of Governance and District Administration,” said Lento. “We’ve still got some hard work to do over the next month.”

Under the Schools Act, Boards of Education in the province are not allowed to run deficits. The Vancouver Board of Education recently announced it was facing an $18.2 million deficit and that it was considering selling off assets to pay down the deficit.