The 2024-25 draft budget for the Windsor Essex Catholic District School Board has been presented to the trustees, with a projected $1.97-million deficit.
The trustees were presented with the draft budget on Tuesday evening with options on next steps to balancing the budget.
The WECDSB is presenting a $321-million expenditure budget, with only $319-million of in-year grant revenues to offset these expenses, hence the $1.97-million deficit, which is 0.5 per cent of the board's operating allocation.
Through the Education Act the board must adopt a balanced budget, and in order to do that the board was presented with the option of taking one per cent of their operating revenue for the fiscal year to balance the budget over the next two years.
While the board is facing a number of challenges this year, including a lack of funding for special education, challenges with transportation, and unknown impacts of Bill 124 adjustments, the board is seeing some positives, including a projected enrolment of just over 22,000 students for 2024-25 - an increase of over 1,000 students compared to the year prior.
This increase in enrolment will provide additional grant revenue to the board, which will go towards the addition of 62 new teachers.
Fulvio Valentinis, Chair of the WECDSB, says while this is a challenging budget, there are some positives.
"We have very healthy enrolment projections which come through in the budget, which is great news in terms of bringing in revenue, but it also brings in increased costs because staffing costs are 80 per cent of our budget, and with increased enrolment we have increased staffing requirements."
He says with Bill 124 being repealed in February, the board is unsure how much the government will fund, which has created a major challenge.
"We know that the province has negotiated these contracts with the different labour groups, whether it's teachers, support staff, but we don't know whether the extra money they're going to give us is going to cover 100 per cent of those increased costs. So, we'll just have to wait and see, but we're hoping it will come close to covering most of the costs on that - that's a major challenge."
Valentinis says 62 additional teachers are being hired to help with the increased enrolment.
"Overall, we're increasing the amount of teachers that we have significantly even though we've made adjustments and cuts in a few areas. We also have 16 additional Educational Assistants, and Early Childhood Education there's an additional seven of those that are being hired."
The board has approximately $28.5-million in accumulated surplus, however only $9.4-million of that can be used. Administration is recommending to use $1.97-million of reserve funding to balance the budget.
The budget will be finalized next week during the June 18 meeting.
The budget needs to be sent to the Ministry of Education by June 28.