At its June 21, 2011 Regular Board Meeting, the Halton Catholic District School Board approved the 2011-2012 budget estimates in the amount of $311,060,405. This compliant budget will be filed with the Ministry of Education by the June 30, 2011 deadline.

In order for a school board’s budget to be compliant with the Ministry of Education’s guidelines, the in-year budget deficit must be less than one per cent of the total operating grant revenue that a board receives from the provincial government.

“Despite ongoing budget challenges, we have approved a budget compliant with Ministry requirements,” says Michael W. Pautler, Director of Education. “In order to achieve this compliant budget and to include some new initiatives to support our students, $1.85 million of budget reductions have been identified.”

New initiatives for the 2011-2012 school year are consistent with both the Board’s and the Ministry of Education’s objectives, such as:

• a Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program supervisor to support the expansion of this program for the Board’s youngest learners
• an increase to school budgets to maintain programs in light of the Ministry’s guidelines for fees for learning materials and activities, and guidelines for fundraising (introduced in March, 2011)
• two new Social Workers to support an increased focus on student mental health
• an increase in spending on technology programs

“This year, budget cuts were made in the non-salary, non-benefit areas of the budget, resulting in an overall decrease in expenditures,” explains Michael W. Pautler. “Next year, the budget process will begin much earlier than usual in order to identify potential savings. It will involve public consultation to ensure our Board budget decisions reflect the priorities of stakeholders.”

The funding allocation is based on estimated enrolment. Elementary and secondary enrolment is based on Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) enrolment for October 31 and March 31. These two fixed-in-time FTE enrolment values are combined to produce the annualized Average Daily Enrolment (ADE). The Board anticipates a very small increase of 0.1% in enrolment for the 2011-2012 fiscal year.

School boards continue to be responsible for setting their budgets. Education funding recognizes that school boards need flexibility to decide how to best allocate resources within those budgets. At the same time, there are restrictions set by the Ministry on how school boards may use certain components of their allocation. School boards continue to be accountable for how they use all the revenue that they receive from education funding grants, including the revenue that they can use flexibly.