MOOSE JAW — The Ministry of Education has provided Moose Jaw’s Catholic school division with an extra $1.7 million to address early learning, collective bargaining and the new joint-use school.
Trustees with Holy Trinity Catholic School Division received several finance-related reports during their March meeting tabout how the additional money affected this year’s budget.
One report showed that the ministry provided an extra $50,000 to support the division’s Early Learning and Intensive Supports (ELIS) Program, which provides access to high-quality early learning programs for three- and four-year-old children who have intensive needs.
This additional support will increase the school division’s ELIS Program spaces to five from three.
Furthermore, the province provided $422,667 so Holy Trinity can address the pending settlement of the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) with the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation.
“The Ministry of Education is making this payment based on estimated wage settlement amounts with a reconciliation of actual costs being completed later in the fiscal year,” the report said.
These two financial amounts total $472,667, which increases Holy Trinity’s 2024-25 budget to $47,793,307 from $47,320,640.
A second report showed that the ministry provided Holy Trinity with an extra $1,206,528 in capital funding for Our Lady of Hope Catholic Elementary School, part of the joint-use building on South Hill.
The cost in June 2023 that the Catholic school division was expected to pay for its share of the project was $28,977,045, but that number has risen to $30,183,573 with the extra provincial funding.
The two areas that increased were siteworks activities, which jumped to $1,00,276 from zero, and maximum construction contingency, which increased to $897,907 from $691,655.
While the province gave Holy Trinity extra money for several initiatives, it also reduced funding for the division’s Canada-Saskatchewan Agreement on Minority-Language Education and Second Official-Language Instruction program.
The organization had budgeted $69,923 in revenues for the 2024-25 school year, but the province reduced that grant by $26,503 — or 37.9 per cent — and reduced it to $43,420. Of that remaining amount, $13,044 will support teacher recruitment and retention.
The report did not say why the province reduced the grant funding.
Meanwhile, a third report looked at the division’s second-quarter finances and showed that, as of Feb. 28, Holy Trinity’s operating revenues were at 43.6 per cent of budget. In comparison, that number in the previous three fiscal years averaged 49.3 per cent.
Curt Van Parys, the division’s chief financial officer, said “a gap” between this year’s percentage and the three-year average is because the CBA amount the province provided was not included in the Q2 report since the board had just approved receiving that money. So, the third-quarter report would reflect those financial changes.
“When our funding was provided (by the ministry) back in March (2024) for this fiscal year, there was additional funding of about $800,000, also to offset the cost of a future provincial collective bargaining agreement,” he continued.
So, if the division had received all the CBA-related incomes consistently throughout the year, its operating revenues would be at roughly 48 per cent of the budget, the CFO said. Thus, his concern about the gap dissipated.
Meanwhile, that same issue affected operating expenses, because the division had expended 50.4 per cent of its operating budget by Feb. 28, compared to the three-year average of 54.4 per cent, Van Parys added. So, aside from that main concern, revenues and expenses “are where they should be” for this time of year.
The next Holy Trinity board meeting is Monday, April 14.
