March 9

Another article by Karen Brownlee in today's Leader Post:

School board keeping an eye on new funding formula

Karen Brownlee
The Leader-Post
Friday, March 09, 2007
If the provincial government understands how much it costs to educate rural students, the Chinook School Board says it had better show it in the next provincial budget.
While there is a new formula the government wants to try for rural school divisions, a government official said she can't say that Saskatchewan Learning has found the right one yet.
"This year we're trying this on for size and saying, 'OK, how is this going to work?'" said Dr. Helen Horsman, the assistant deputy minister of Saskatchewan Learning.
"As soon as this year's grant comes down ... then (we'll) step back and work with school divisions again to say, 'What kind of fit is this?'
It hopes by adding a remote school factor as well as a geographic factor that school boards like Chinook can begin to set mill rates closer to what urban property owners pay.
"We're hoping that some of the extra funding that is going to come their way is going to help compensate them for some of their costs of running their schools," said Horsman.
"They will have the opportunity instead of raising their mill rates, to keep it consistent or see what they can do with it."
It is also possible the provincial government will continue its education property tax relief program, but that is something Horsman said Saskatchewan Learning will not know until the budget is released.
An average eight-per-cent reduction was given to all property owners beginning in the spring of 2005 when the provincial government provided $110 million over two years.
Chinook's property owners need to know the government wants to do its part to educate their students, said Gary Shaddock, chairman of the board.
"We are going through the process of trying to find efficiencies by looking at school viability," said Shaddock.
"You can only go so far with that until all of a sudden, you don't have any schools left."
Chinook property owners pay much more than Regina's while they are also being told they may have some of their schools closed.
While some facilities may need to be shut down, Shaddock said students can't be travelling unreasonable distances to get an education.
Shaddock is not the first to say the problem with government funding is that it is done on a per-student basis.
Chinook has nearly the same number of schools as Regina Public School Division but less than a third of the students. There are 63 schools and 6,228 students in and around Swift Current in the Chinook School Division.
In the Regina Public School Division, 20,223 students attend the 61 schools it had as of Sept. 30. The figures come from the active list of Saskatchewan schools put together by Saskatchewan Learning.
Even with the special factors that have been put in place in the past, Shaddock said government funding doesn't go far enough to recognize the inherently higher costs of operating schools with fewer students spread across thousands of square kilometres.