Edmonton Catholic School Division facing $14M deficit for upcoming school year

The Edmonton Catholic School Division is facing a $14.2-million deficit for the next school year, which board trustees and division officials say will leave around 2,000 students unfunded and reduce the number of schools offering full-day kindergarten. 

"That deficit is $14.2 million, that's not a comfortable position for us. It is a matter of serious concern,"  trustee Terence Harris said during a public board meeting on Wednesday discussing the division's 2024-2025 operating budget. 

"This year, current year, the calculation shows that we're educating over 2,000 students who are unfunded — not underfunded — unfunded," Harris said. 

"As a metro division, we can still make that work by spreading our scarce resources. But there's something off there. There's something off in a formula that disincentivizes growth, in a system, in a province that wants to encourage growth."

The board says at issue is a provincial formula that uses a weighted moving average to determine how much school authorities receive for each student enrolled.

The education ministry calculates per-student funding using school enrolment counts from the previous and current school years and a projected enrolment for the next school year.

The approach is supposed to soften the blow for school divisions with declining enrolments and temper the demands of school divisions experiencing hefty enrolment increases.

In late May, trustees with Edmonton Public Schools called the province's education funding formula "broken" as they unanimously approved a $1.35-billion budget for the upcoming 2024-25 school year that required the division to use millions of dollars in reserves to fund.

"There are school boards across the province that are going to need to access reserves to balance their budgets for next school year," Marilyn Dennis, president of the Alberta School Boards Association, said in an interview with Radio-Canada. 

Edmonton Catholic trustees said the division must use $12.2 million from its accumulated surplus.

Dennis said high enrolment across several school boards in the province means base funding needs to increase so that the weighted moving average can be more effective. 

"We are very happy to welcome new students into our schools and our communities. But the the cost of enrolment is significant, because ... we need more of everything else. More teachers, more space, more supplies, more services."  

Matt Hoven, an associate professor at the University of Alberta specializing in religious education, said the funding model doesn't work well for larger divisions.

"Where there'd be an expected amount on a year-to-year basis, it's lagging over a three-year average," Hoven said in an interview. 

High enrolment and the cutting of programming

Edmonton Catholic has seen an increase in enrolment as more families have moved to the province in recent years. 

The division, the fourth-largest in Alberta, serves more than 47,000 students in 94 schools.

The total number of students for the next school year is expected to increase by 5.7 per cent, resulting in over 50,000 students for the first time in the division's history. 

The division has a utilization rate of 98 per cent across its schools.

Harris said the present funding model, announced in 2020, does not sufficiently address the increased pressures on the division from factors such as inflation. 

One major cut will be made to the Catholic division's 100 Voices pre-kindergarten programming, which supports children with severe developmental delays. The number of schools able to offer the program will also be reduced. 

"Edmonton Catholic was such a strong leader in 100 Voices programs in full-day kindergarten; what happened to us is we could no longer sustain the Cadillac services we were offering," trustee Debbie Engel said during Wednesday's meeting.

"We don't want it where they come to high school, and they've just been left behind or dropped … it's unacceptable to fail them in that way."

Trustees said they would continue to advocate to the provincial government about the funding model. 

In a statement last week, Education Minister Demetrios Nicolaides said the weighted moving average, plus supplemental grants for growing divisions, "achieves the best of both worlds" for growing and shrinking divisions.

"I'm always open to talking with our school boards and making improvements as necessary," his statement said.