Increased staffing costs will be a consideration as Nanaimo-Ladysmith school district begins deliberations for next year’s budget.
Mark Walsh, Nanaimo Ladysmith Public Schools secretary-treasurer, gave a preview at the April 12 business committee meeting ahead of 2023-24 preliminary budget talks. The school district is preparing for a general wage increase in teachers’ salaries and an hourly wage hike coming for CUPE Local 606 education support workers.
According to a staff report, more than 1,400 full-time-equivalent staff – teachers, administrators, education assistants, support staff and other professionals – are projected for the 2023-24 school year.
Walsh said 91 per cent of expenses are staff-driven.
“The big outstanding item for us right now is exempt (non-unionized) compensation,” he said at the meeting. “We’re seeing that CUPE and teachers are going to get well over six per cent [for cost-of-living adjustments] … typically exempt increases align with our unionized staff and they largely did last year. At this point however, we do not know how much that will be and we also do not know how much will be funded.”
Walsh said if exempt staff do receive the same adjustments as support workers and teachers, and it isn’t funded, there is a potential for a deficit.
SD68 is also anticipating a notable increase in its annual facilities grant from the province, from $2.8 million to $3.4 million. The money is used for items such as school upkeep. In addition, the school district anticipates more than $1.6 million for the Feeding Futures fund for 2023-24 for school meal programs.
“We are able to reallocate some of those funds to fund currently existing programming. For instance, if we have a cafeteria assistant, as an example … we could take some of the $1.6 and put it to that to be able to use [those] operating dollars on another priority of the district,” the secretary-treasurer said. “Again, we’re very tight, because we’re not growing very much from a per-student basis, so we are very much on the line … we’re getting some final information from the [Ministry of Education].”
District enrolment for September 2023-24 is estimated to be approximately 14,952 full-time equivalent students, according to the report.
B.C. school boards are provincially mandated to submit a budget by June 30 and the school district told the News Bulletin Nanaimo-Ladysmith expects to pass its preliminary budget at the May 24 board meeting.
READ ALSO: NDSS still Gabriola catchment school, overcrowding issue remains
RELATED: SD68 22-23 budget has support for students on autism spectrum
karl.yu@nanaimobulletin.com
Like us on Facebook and follow Karl on Twitter and Instagram