Several school boards projecting deficits in 'very difficult budget year'

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared on The Trillium, a Village Media website devoted exclusively to covering provincial politics at Queen’s Park.

Several school boards across Ontario are submitting deficit budgets to the province in what one representative says has been "a very difficult budget year."

"We have a funding issue in school boards in Ontario. What's happening this year is that more and more boards are finding it difficult to get to balance," said Cathy Abraham, president of the Ontario Public School Boards’ Association (OPSBA), which represents English public boards and public school authorities that account for more than half the student population in Ontario. 

"Almost every board in this province that I know of is saying it's been a very difficult budget year," she said. 

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. 

Several boards have announced in recent weeks that they have approved their budgets, with some reporting deficits and others saying they were able to achieve a balanced budget by cutting costs.

The Halton District School Board (HDSB) approved its $920 million budget on June 19. It includes a projected deficit of $1.8 million even after cutting 94 positions and finding more than $10 million in "savings and efficiencies," according to board chair Amy Collard. 

"I must underscore that a reduction of this scale will involve cuts across the entire system which will affect student learning," Collard said in a statement to The Trillium. 

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 (CPP/EI) implemented over the last four years."

"These cuts will have immediate and long-term impacts on the quality of education for all HDSB students, higher class sizes for special education, kindergarten and secondary classes, the ability to maintain school buildings and grounds and replace learning resources and technology," she said. 

The Toronto District School Board (TDSB), which is the country's largest school board, is submitting a $3.5 Billion operating budget that it said prioritized things like "maintaining special education investments" and school budgets.

But in order to balance its own budget, the board said it had to find savings — $5 million from reducing "central staff" positions, $5 million in school operations which could include schools charging a fee for the use or repair of Chromebooks that students are given and $10.5 million by trying to tackle staff absenteeism. The board has also said it plans to use around $28 million in proceeds of disposition, which is money it gets from selling its properties. The board's chair has previously said these funds are typically used to fix or replace the board's aging infrastructure. 

"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. "But make no mistake, we must continue to advocate to the government to fix our structural deficit and fund the true operating costs in the City of Toronto and the unique populations we serve."

For the Thames Valley District School Board (TVDSB), which covers London, Elgin, and Middlesex and Oxford Counties, its projected $7.6 million deficit as part of its $1.2 billion budget represents a "measured response towards a balanced budget, based on insufficient funding, while still advancing strategic priorities."

“We acknowledge persistent funding challenges that school boards, including TVDSB, continue to face," said chair Beth Mai in a June 26 statement. "We’re experiencing the lowest level of per-pupil funding in more than 10 years. Something in the way school boards are funded needs to change if we are to ensure the integrity of our educational programs and services in the coming years."

The board said it was facing "significant unfunded amounts" of around $30 million for "statutory benefits, short-term supply costs for absences and special education."

The Sudbury Catholic District School Board (SCDSB), 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. 

For the Catholic board, its reserves will dip to $5.48 million after its projected deficit of $909,430 for its $121 million budget. 

Board documents show the SCDSB is facing funding gaps in several areas including around $1.8 million in hiring supply teachers, $200,000 for statutory benefits such as increases in employer CPP contributions, and $500,000 for transportation. 

SCDSB chair Michael Bellmore said he thinks “a rather substantive amount of boards” will be submitting deficit budgets. 

“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.

The Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board's (DPCDSB) projected deficit sits at $39.8 million. 

A spokesperson for the board said one of the main challenges is that the DPCDSB has a "100% employer-paid Long Term Disability (LTD) plan benefit entitlement that is embedded in local collective agreements for all employee groups" and that the costs have become "unmanageable." 

"In addition to the LTD costs, ongoing enrolment decline across the region, and gaps in funding for statutory benefit costs and student transportation, have also impacted DPCDSB’s deficit position," Bruce Campbell said. "These unfunded components require the Ministry to adjust Core Education funding."

The Toronto Catholic District School Board is looking at a $66.5 million deficit for the upcoming school year, with the board saying that the deficit is "structural in nature which is also affecting many other school boards throughout the province."

"The budget deficit required staffing adjustments which were accomplished through attrition and elimination of hard-to-fill positions due to current labour market shortages. These measures were taken to minimize the impact on school communities," the board said in a statement.   

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.

Some of the board's financial challenges include plans to spend $5.6 million more on special education than it's been allocated. 

Meanwhile, Shelley Armstrong, superintendent of business and treasurer for the Greater Essex County District School Board's (GECDSB), said trustees have asked staff to review things like transportation agreements, ways to reduce utility expenses and program delivery, such as looking at boundaries for its French immersion program, in order to address the board's funding challenges. 

While it hasn't been decided yet, one possible way to save costs would be to adjust staffing so that class sizes are at the level that the ministry funds instead of having smaller classes in some instances, Armstrong said. She added that what the board receives in areas like special education and transportation is not enough to cover expenses.

The board's projected $6.38 million deficit is beyond the one per cent threshold, meaning it has to submit a plan to eliminate that deficit and get approval from the minister. 

"Ultimately, short of the board getting more funding, the board has to address the deficit, and so will there be impacts to students? There could be in down the road," Armstrong told The Trillium. "So there's two things that need to change — either your funding needs to go up or you have to look at your expenses and adjust your expenses to be more in line with the funding you receive."

Overall, Abraham, OPSBA's president, said boards are experiencing a "consistent, ongoing and annual problem of not getting enough funding for special education needs, for transportation."

In response to questions about boards' concerns, Isha Chaudhuri, a spokesperson for Education Minister Todd Smith, said the government is funding education "at the highest levels in Ontario’s history with $745 million more for the upcoming school year and has supported the hiring of 9,000 education staff since 2018, including 3,500 educational assistants."

She said special education funding is going up by $117.2 million and transportation will be up by about $80 million.

"To support growing communities across Ontario, we have more than doubled funding to a historic $1.3 billion to build more schools faster. We will continue to invest in our students so they can go back to basics in what matters most: reading, writing, and math," she said. 

But Abraham said when it comes to areas like special education, both things can be true — that the government is spending more than before, "but still not be spending enough on special education."

"You have to find that money, so you do with less," she said. "You don't renew Chromebooks that should normally be renewed every five years, you wait seven years. You save money or you get money for those things by cutting other things."

-With files from Heidi Ulrichsen and Darren Taylor