The South East Cornerstone Public School Division will be seeing an increase in funding for the coming school year, but it won’t quite be as much as they would have liked to have seen.  

The provincial budget included a 2.5 percent, or $49.4 million, increase in operating funding for the 27 school divisions in Saskatchewan. How much each school division is receiving, though, won’t be quite as much as a 2.5 percent increase.  

The provincial budget announcement resulted in a small increase of 0.2 percent to our South East Cornerstone School Division funding,” explained Shelley Toth, the Chief Financial Officer for SECPSD. “It’s not likely going to be enough to meet our inflationary pressures, however, we will have more of a complete understanding of the details once we work through our budgeting process.” 

Increases in funding are traditionally tied to enrollment numbers, and the number for SECPSD has stayed relatively stable in recent years. However, the inflation rate is currently over 6 percent, meaning the amount of money SECPSD is receiving will be roughly the same as last year, while a number of their expenses have increased substantially due to inflation.  

There is also the students who are currently using home-based learning. 

“There’s a bit of a change in terms of we do have students enrolled full time in our Cyber Stone Virtual School, and so those students will now be shifted over to the provincial online school, so there’s a bit of change in how that’s being funded,” Toth said.  

Another announcement as part of the provincial budget was a number of capital expenses in the Education Ministry, including the construction of a new school in Carlyle.  

“Right now, we do have a pre-K to Six school and a Grade 7 to 12 school in Carlyle, so the plan would be to build a new pre-K to 12 school there,” Toth stated. “Unfortunately, I don’t know anything more than what you know, other than what was released publicly in the press announcement. We haven’t received further details in terms of funding and the start date for that yet.”