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Trustees want to know if Delta will lose funding

The Delta school board wants to know whether it will end up losing funding while other school districts get more.
funding formula
Trustees agreed to send a letter to Education Minister Rob Fleming asking for details of a new draft funding allocation formula.

The Delta school board wants to know whether it will end up losing funding while other school districts get more.

Trustees agreed to send a letter to Education Minister Rob Fleming asking for details of a new draft funding allocation formula that a review committee has presented to the ministry.

The province’s review is supposed to ensure stable and predictable funding, but local trustees fear it could mean extra money for some districts at the expense of others.

It could be implemented as soon as March 2019 and school boards like Delta have been seeking assurances that, whatever the new formula, it won’t result in districts getting less. It’s something the ministry hasn’t promised yet.

Prior to last week’s meeting, board chair Laura Dixon told the Optimist the B.C. School Trustees Association has also asked for the draft funding formula. She said the new school board in Delta, and new boards elsewhere, shouldn’t be thrown off guard by a change in allocations.

The committee’s review found there is not a great deal of consensus amongst districts on the most pressing issues, however, in general, boards do not want to lose funding through reallocation of existing funding or have a “win” at the expense of another district.

As far as penalizing school districts like Delta that have successfully generated their own revenues, the committee noted, “Locally-generated revenues are an important source of revenue for a number of school districts. However, not all districts have the same ability to generate revenues. While there were some suggestions for some sort of equalization to account for this, most districts felt that these revenues should remain outside the funding model.”

The committee also noted boards, among other things, want the ability to plan for the future, which means some certainty of funding for several years, and boards are also concerned that any move to performance-based funding would punish districts, and students, that need the support the most.

The new funding model is anticipated to be in place for the 2019/2020 school year.