EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.
School boards are required to submit their 2024-25 budgets to the province by the end of June. According to the Education Act, these budgets are supposed to be balanced. But there are circumstances under which boards can run deficits, such as if the deficit is less than 1 per cent of the operating budget and can be covered by a surplus. If a projected deficit goes beyond 1 per cent though, approval is required from the minister.
Collard said the main funding pressures the board faces include provincial investments not keeping up with inflation, funding for supply teachers being $10 million less than actual costs and funding from the province for staff not being "adjusted to cover the extra $6 million in costs associated with the enhancements to Canada Pension Plans and Employment Insurance implemented over the last four years.
"As Trustees, our priority must be to focus our resources to support the academic success and well-being of all TDSB students. Through a commitment to finding efficiencies where possible outside of the classroom and our ability to use one-time funding, we have done just that," TDSB Chair Rachel Chernos Lin said in a statement.
The Sudbury Catholic District School Board , the Rainbow District School Board and the Algoma District School Board are also all facing deficits and plan to pull from their reserves, as reported by Sudbury.com and SooToday. “I can definitely say that we are not the only board in this city or in this province in this kind of situation,” Bellmore, who is also the president of the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, said during a recent board meeting.
Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board trustees voted earlier this month to approve a budget for the next school year with a $2.3 million deficit. While an original proposal projected a $1.97 million deficit, trustees opted to increase that by $340,000 in order to add back staff positions "whose duties were expected to be reassigned" including two child and youth workers and two itinerant teachers for the deaf and blind.