When the Ministry of Education announced on Dec. 9 that all school districts would be getting back $115 per full-time equivalent student in a release of holdback funds, the New Westminster school district's $521,237 2010/11 deficit became a whole lot easier to erase.
The district discovered that it would receive $649,000 in holdback funding, and by using a portion of that - $130,000 - to cover off the deficit, the district didn't have to make deeper cuts to its already tight budget to address their shortfall from last year.
Secretary-treasurer Brian Sommerfeldt had already received good news in November when SD40 Business Company chief executive officer Brent Atkinson advised him that the district would be receiving an additional $200,000 in revenue from its operations.
Sommerfeldt conservatively allocated only $143,000 of that to the deficit, meaning that trustees unanimously passed a deficit recovery plan of $247,766 on Tuesday to complete their budget.
The bulk of that number comes in savings to the district's departmental supplies and services budget ($68,000) and in the school supply and service allocations budget ($150,000). The final $29,766 in savings comes from reallocating existing staff to fill vacant positions.
New trustee MaryAnn Mortensen was happy to see the deficit recovery plan approved, but she said the district needs to look at new ways of doing things so they won't have to go through this exercise every year.
"We need to look at a contingency plan," said Mortensen. "We're one of the few, maybe the only district in the province not to have a strategic plan. ... I like the idea of us looking at a strategic plan going forward."
Trustee Michael Ewen said at Tuesday night's meeting that while he appreciated the return of the holdback funds, he believes money that comes to the district should be invested into schools and children.
"I don't want to see $500,000 or $600,000 going to a surplus (fund)," said Ewen. "That means $500,000 or $600,000 not going to students."
But Ewen did say that the lessons of past budgets have showed him that the district needs to be more conservative in future planning, which is why Tuesday's amended motion to recover only $247,766 uses only a portion of the holdback money the district is receiving.
Ewen said the savings in school and departmental budgets are moves that will have less of an effect on the people, such as staff and students, in the district.
In fact, Sommerfeldt's original deficit recovery plan would have seen the district try and recover $423,710, which would have included more than $137,710 in staffing savings from having existing staff fill vacant positions and $68,000 in savings from learning services cuts.
But the holdback money allowed trustees to keep the learning services programs and keep a small budget for hiring staff to fill the vacant positions in the district.
The board's deficit recovery plan has to be reported to the Ministry of Education, with a first report due in March 2012.
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