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Thursday, May 8, 2014
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Recycling lives on
YOUTHFUL VISION Harrison approves 15-year-old’s farm market plan
8 NAPPING ON THE JOB RCMP nab sleeping men in stolen truck
3 COMMUNITY PRIDE Museum holds meet and greet for volunteers
11
PHOTO COURTESY OF JIM GRIESHABER-OTTO
When a pilot project aimed at reducing agricultural plastics in the Bailey Landfill ended last year, local farmers took up the slack and kept the program going. They held their first drop off last week, collecting about 10 tons of ag plastic. Read the full story, page 10.
Enrolment numbers cause concern School board facing further cuts to revenue Jessica Peters THE OBSERVER
INSIDE opinion . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 mailbag . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 community . . . . . . . . . 8 entertainment. . . . . . . 12 sports . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 classiÄeds . . . . . . . . . 14
The Fraser Cascade school district is facing reduced revenues of $283,000 for the 2014/2015 school year. This is the third year that SD 78 has been in 'funding protection" by the Ministry of Education. Each year, MoE funding is reduced by 1.5%, bringing the total loss to just under $900,000 for the three years. Secretary-treasurer outlined the budget at a public meeting Monday afternoon, in the library of Agassiz elementary secondary school. She explained that only 1% of district funding comes from sources other than MOE. If this seems like a problem now, it could be even worse in the next
few years. Enrolment is currently on the decline, she said, so while they have less money for program operation, there are fewer students to teach. That enrolment decline is slowing down, and is expected to increase in the 2016/2017 school year. "This means that when the district begins to see an increase in students, we will actually be worse off in terms of funding as we will be making due on less funding," Lowe Zucchet said. There are a few other pressures on the budget this year, she added. Besides the revenue reductions, they are seeing increases in BC Hydro rates, which rose 9% this April, and will rise another 6% next April. While
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the district has an energy saving program, and has recently upgraded some schools to be more efficient, this will still pose an estimated increase of $28,500 in energy costs. Also taken into account are the cost pressures from inflation, and the increase in costs of services "similar to what you're probably seeing on your bills at home," she said. Things like delivery cost charges and fuel surcharges are showing up where they never existed before, she added. In addition to usual education funding, $20,000 has been earmarked for the November school board elections, which Lowe-Zucchet said may be a low estimate. The district has also set aside funding
to upgrade the roof of the Coquihalla school, and some of that may also come out of reserves. The estimate for that job is upward of $600,000. Another $27,000 had to be added to the budget to cover rising costs of employee benefits, including CPP, EI, teacher pension and MSP. A new student information system will be implementing this year, replacing BCeSis. That will require additional resources, Lowe-Zucchet said. That could add as much when $60,000 to the budget as staff time and training is taken into account. There were some questions that remain unanswered as of yet, too. There are outstanding teacher Continued on 8
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