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By Emily Keller
grande prairie public school division

GPPSD revised budget approved, minor staff reductions included

Dec 13, 2019 | 2:11 PM

The Grande Prairie Public School Board has released an update to their 2019-2020 budget.

The school board is facing a deficit of $3.3 million, and the board of trustees has approved administration’s recommendations on how to balance the budget.

54% of the deficit will be covered through school and division reserves, while 9% (approximately $300,000) of it will be made up through staff reductions.

Superintendent Sandy McDonald says he doesn’t want those positions affected to harm the learning experience.

“We established the principal that any expense reductions we were going to make needed to be as removed from the frontline staff and the experience they have with those students in our classrooms as possible.”

McDonald says while he can not disclose any specific positions that will be impacted, they are expecting some retirements in the next year which will cover some of the deficit, and they will be working on the other unknown affected positions in January.

He also adds that currently, they are facing a teacher shortage, saying one recently posted position had no applicants.

“Then we try to readjust inside the school to be able to balance those kinds of conditions, to address those kinds of shortages. So, it’s a really small amount of the overall solution and we’re just finding it here and there and not making any widespread changes.”

24% will be covered through infrastructure, maintenance and renewal funds, which will see the Board deferring all planned building maintenance projects until about six months to a year.

Superintendent Sandy McDonald says they also have a $5 million deficit projected for 2020-2021, which he describes as the worst-case scenario.

“We are looking at just about everything we do. We’re looking at the class configurations we have in our schools. We’re starting to work with our enrollment projections for next year. We’re looking at the programs that we offer. We’re looking at the fees that we charge. We’re looking at staffing we provide for centralized supports. We’re looking at our administration costs.”

by Emily Keller