The Pine Creek School Division has been going over its budget for the upcoming school year, and things aren't looking promising. In fact, the situation is looking grim.

Ash Nizamani, Secretary-Treasurer at Pine Creek School Division, joined the division two years ago and explains his findings.

"When I came in, I looked at the data, and I found that province had been decreasing operating support funding for Pine Creek over the last five or six years. They were reducing almost 2 per cent annually. So, now Pine Creek has lost almost 10 per cent of its provincial operating funding support, and that has reduced Pine Creek's ability to operate effectively."

Nizamani notes that their current budget is in deficit, and they are currently using their operating surplus.

"For next year, our operating surplus will not be there," says Nizamani. "We will be tapping into our capital surplus and still will be short of a lot of money."

He explains two challenges that the school division is facing next year.

"Our first challenge is our reduction of operating funding from the province, and the other is wage & inflationary pressure. So, for wage pressure, the government is giving some funding. That is good, but that will not be enough. The other pressure is the reduction in operating funding. So, across the province, all school divisions are facing wage pressure, but most school divisions are not facing operating support funding cuts."

Nizamani points out that the school division's operating costs are mainly fixed and go up with inflation, but that's not the case from the province's perspective.

"The province is treating our costs as a variable cost, so our funding is tied with our enrollments. That kind of model supports urban areas where the population is continuously growing. So, over the years, funding has been shifted from Pine Creek and some other rural school divisions to urban areas."

He warns that if this situation doesn't change, the division will not have enough money to pay its operating costs for the upcoming year.

"Pine Creek is a purely rural area that doesn't have any urban centers. So, for example, if a teacher has 15 kids or 20 kids in a class, it doesn't matter from a cost perspective. But from a funding perspective, it matters a lot. So, this is basically a fundamental flaw in the current funding model. And that had been hitting Pine Creek and some other rural school divisions over the last six years."

Nizamani states that the Department of Education has hired consultants who are working on this situation.

He says that he wants the province to consider the cost of operating a school division as a fixed cost, not a variable cost.

"When you consider it as a fixed cost, it means your funding will not change with the changes in enrollment. For example, if students will decrease in a class from 20 to 15. You need to pay those teachers their full salary, right? So, if your funding goes down with that, how can you manage?"

Nizamani concludes that this model is unfair to rural school divisions like Pine Creek, as some school divisions are overfunded, and some are underfunded.