The 2021-22 budget for School District 73 has been approved by the board. It totals $197,903,177.

Board Chair Rhonda Kershaw says over 80% of that money going towards staffing costs. “Wages and benefits. The remainder goes to maintaining our buildings, keeping the lights on and a little bit goes to specialized programming and administration.”

Kershaw says it really responded to some of the challenges. “What we haven’t been able to do is address those wish list items that we have that might alleviate some of the learning loss that students have seen that were off school for a number of months. We haven’t put any new programming into place, but on the flip side, on the positive we haven’t lost any programming.”

Kershaw calls this is a conservative budget. “We are hoping that we will maybe see some funds released this summer to deal with what we expect are going to be some ongoing costs for response to COVID, but we have also kept the extra janitorial staff that we put in place this year.”

this was the final budget for outgoing Secretary Treasurer Kalvin Stretch. He noted that this was “not a stretch budget” as Finance Director  Trina Cassidy took the lead. Kershaw says the district is in a good place financially and a lot of that can be attributed to Kalvin’s leadership.