School formula will wait

School boards across the province will wait at least another year to find out how the government will divvy up dollars for public education over the long term.

Last week, the Ministry of Education sent a memo to the president of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) advising a new provincewide funding formula would not be part of this year’s budget, reneging on the oft-repeated promise by ministry officials to deliver a new formula by this year’s budget. On Tuesday, individual school boards also received the same news.

Officials in the Ministry of Education have realized the proposed funding model they have come up with would create "rather large discrepancies" among divisions, said Education Minister Donna Harpauer. With a little more than one month left until the budget, the ministry has decided the new system is not ready.

"This goes beyond kinks," said Harpauer. Under the new model, some divisions would see double-digit percentage decreases in their budget.

"The formula itself is not ready until some significant questions are answered," she said.

The decision pushes the unveiling of a proposed formula past this fall’s provincial election. Administrators say they’ve worked with old numbers based on their previous ability to set the mill rate for three years, and the continued delays by the ministry makes it difficult to develop long-term plans.

Boards have worked with the baseline budget set in 2009 after the province took away the authority of school boards to set local mill rates. Requests for increases can be made on top of these baseline budgets to cover areas such as student enrolment increases for the year before.

The delay in a long-term funding model has created difficulty for boards in areas such as hiring, said Ray Morrison, chair of the Saskatoon public school board.

"We’re in another time of continued uncertainty. It makes it more and more difficult to plan for the future when we don’t know what the formula looks like and what we have to plan with," he said.

Across the province, boards face similar frustrations, said Sandi Urban-Hall, president of the SSBA.

"We were all feeling hopeful that this period of limbo that we’ve been in the last two years is coming to a conclusion," she said, adding there is hope the new model will bring a greater sense of equity to boards across the province.

"It’s disappointing that we’re going to have to wait some more," she said. "In fairness, if it was going to be implemented and it was going to cause more harm than good, I’m glad they waited. The flip side is, how long can boards continue to operate in limbo?"

With 28 boards in the province, the impact of the delay will be felt in a number of different ways, from holding off on upgrading school facilities, to buying buses or expanding programs.

Harpauer is reticent to fault anyone for the delay.

"I don’t think there is blame really. This is a huge initiative. It is a significant shift within our province," she said. "This is not a matter of reducing funding, it’s a matter of changing a formula."

School boards will find out what their allocations are on budget day. Harpauer said she is confident the new funding formula will be part of the 2012 budget cycle.