Thread by @atypicalalbertn

How can school boards claim that they are getting less money while the government claims that they have frozen operational spending? Who’s telling the truth? Could it be that both are? A thread (1 of 12). #abed #ableg

The answer is true that both could be right. The difference comes down in part to fiscal years. The government’s fiscal year is Apr 1 - Mar 30 and school board fiscals are Sep 1 - Aug 30. (2/12)

In setting the education budget for 2019/20 (effective Apr 1 2019) the UCP government took the operation actuals for 2018/19 (effective Apr 1 2018) and froze it for four years going forward. (3/12)

But those 2018/19 actuals (eff Apr ‘18) included 5 months from the 2017/18 school year and 7 months from the 2018/19 school year (eff Sep ‘18). The 2017/18 school year had about 15,000 fewer students than 2018/19, ergo less funding in those months than the latter 7 months. (4/12)

So it’s not like the 2018/19 school year funding was frozen going forward. In fact the government’s 2019/20 budget (eff Apr ‘19) would include 5 months of school year 2018/19 at the higher enrolment, and that funding was already spent by school boards. (5/12)

In order to make the math work, they would need to fund school year 2019/20 at a rate closer in line with 2017/18 than 2018/19. Consequently school boards are likely seeing a total funding reduction for the 2019/20 school year even though they have more students. (6/12)

At the same time, the government can legitimately claim that they’ve frozen spending at 2018/19 levels, but they’re not talking about school year 2018/19 levels. They’re talking gov fiscal 2018/19 levels which includes that 5 months of school year 2017/18. Confused yet? (7/12)

Now to compound the problem for school boards, they already hired for Sep 1, 2019 based on promises of “maintained or increased funding” and a pledge to fund enrolment growth. They operated for two months before the budget came down. (8/12)

But because the total overall funding for school year 2019/20 had to be reduced from 2018/19, the school boards were setting their budgets on much higher assumptions than they actually received. In year corrections combined with running deficits became necessary. (9/12)

All of this would be much more clear to the rest of us, if the government released previous year estimates along with present year actuals in the funding projections provided to school boards. But this year, they deleted the “before” column. #abed #AbLeg (10/12)

It appears here like Black Gold is set to receive more in 2019/20 than in 2018/19, but we don’t know from this what their actual enrolments came in at. This data is a projection made before March of 2018. The ATA has FOIPed the missing data and then we’ll know. (11/12)

Until then, it’s quite possible that both school board and government are correct. That funding was maintained across the government fiscal years while being cut when comparing school board fiscal years. #abed #AbLeg (end/12)

It’s also worth noting that when you compare the funding sheets, infrastructure funding and renewal was added into the green area on 2019/20 funding profiles whereas it was listed separately in 2018/19. (13/12) h/t @TrinaYYC