Province provides $40 million in additional funding to school divisions

The Saskatchewan government is directing an additional $40 million to the province’s school divisions following numerous calls for increased funding in the wake of the provincial budget.

According to the Ministry of Education, $20 million is earmarked to address enrolment growth in the 2023-24 school year beyond what divisions projected, while the other $20 million will be available to help school divisions hire support staff “to respond to challenges of classroom complexity.”

Those positions include teachers, speech language pathologists, counsellors and educational pathologists, the ministry noted.

Dustin Duncan, Saskatchewan’s minister of education. (Shane Clausing/980 CJME)

The funding was promised in early May, but school divisions were left trying to work out their budgets without knowing exactly how much additional funding was coming their way, or when it would arrive.

Diane Boyko, chair of Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools, said her division is grateful for the additional funding.

“Today’s announcement is a good first step in the right direction to give school divisions adequate, sustainable and predictable funding so we can best serve students and families,” Boyko said in a statement.

“In a perfect world, $54 million would be lovely, because that would have taken into consideration all the inflationary processes we’ve all been part of. Seven million dollars to get us to another level,” she added.

Boyko’s school division recently increased lunch supervision fees and eliminated a number of positions based on the funding allocated in the provincial budget. According to a letter Boyko sent to parents and caregivers, the division’s per-student funding in 2023-24 was lower than it was in 2015-16.

A number of other school divisions made similar changes, increasing fees and eliminating positions or leaving them vacant in an effort to save funds.

Boyko said the new funding will get her division back to a level where schools can look to bring back services they’ve had to cut.

With the new $40-million top-up, the ministry said Saskatchewan’s 27 school divisions now have a record operating budget of $2.08 billion for the upcoming school year.

“This 4.5 per cent increase in school operating when compared to last year is part of the government’s commitment to ensuring students all across the province have access to high quality education,” Education Minister Dustin Duncan said in a statement.