The Superintendent of the Kamloops-Thompson School District is looking to January for when its finances will be back in order.

In early September, Secretary-Treasurer Trina Cassidy said there was a $2.2-million budget deficit that was created by an accounting error as there was a some revenue that was counted twice. It has since been reported that there was a shakeup in the district’s finance team that included Cassidy losing her job as a result of the error.

The district has since gone on a mission to try and make up for the error. Initial steps included adjusting the professional development day structure for teachers and increasing in the per-kilometer rates that parents pay to allow their students to take field trips.

Dr. Rhonda Nixon says it was a very challenging start to a new school year. “But I am proud of the steps that we’ve been able to take. So as you well know, we focused our plan around district level supplies and services, and we actually focused on sustainable reductions. So that was presented to the Board on October 7, and then following that, we got to a point where we had to look at the fact that we had limited reserves. And what happens at this time of the year for every school jurisdiction is they look at the actuals from last year and this year, and they ask the question, do we have realistic amounts of money that we have set aside?”

“We want to make sustainable changes that can be maintained to replenish the reserves that that are not there right now.”

Nixon now says that the district should find itself in a better place by early 2025. “Next year, I believe we’ll be back to normal. And we’ll see that we’re back to normal as of January, is what I reported to the Board. Because January we’ll have the other sources of income in the budget, which is the classroom enhancement fund. And I believe that fund is really critical to us, because we have a lot of teachers who have classrooms that met the class size composition guidelines to qualify for additional funding. And so we do expect that will be positive news, and then from there, it’ll just get better.”

“One of the benefits of doing this is taking a harder look at our budgets. That we ask good questions. When we looked at the per kilometer field trip rate, we did realize we haven’t adjusted that in many, many years. So that was a good realization to our team.” What else is there like that? “We tend to still print things for some meetings. Maybe we go completely digital. Well, what would that save us? Good idea.”

“I know those sounds small, but when you add up all efficiencies, it’s always good to review budgets,” said Nixon. “When you talk about structural changes that will come out of this, these conversations to produce live budgets that reach a sustainable budget means that we are attending to efficiencies that are reasonable.” Another example was if the district can do something digitally instead of having people spend mileage to go to a place, that can save a lot of money as well.

Land Sale

The board did look at the potential sale of some land at its October 21 board meeting. However, Nixon says those discussions were not due to the need to find money.

“We do have three properties that are posted for consultation. That would have happened regardless of budget. That’s what unfortunately, people maybe conflate the two… So this is to replenish capital assets. That’s a different pot of money. It’s not the operating fund, which is where our concern is.”

The lands being considered for sale:

How has the morale of staff been impacted as a result

Nixon believes that the School District 73 Board has been rather transparent with what has occurred and believes that has aided in mitigating some of the concern that staff may have had about the future. “I can say, being transparent and being upfront about the hard news, I think has helped morale. Even though it’s hard. It is a difficult time.”

“I think people need to know the timeline, that by January, we’ll hear about our extra sources of funding. So they can breathe a sigh of relief that, yes, we’re on track, but more importantly, we’ve been through the hardest part.”

At the start of the 2024-2025 school year, the District had a deficit of $784,000 in Operating Funds and $1.2M in Local Capital.

Statement from the District on steps to replenish operating budget

In order to replenish the Operating Reserve Balances and the Local Capital Fund, the Board approved a budget reduction plan (presented at the Regular Public Board meeting on September 23, 2024) that had sustainable budget reductions at the District level of approximately $1.8 M. The key strategies of the budget reduction plan were:

• • Reducing Supplies and Services 15-25% in District Level Budgets
  • School Supply Carry Forward Reductions
  • Increasing the per kilometer field trip rate from $0.35/km to $0.54/km.
  • Managing relief costs

SD73 has since continued its review and determined the situation facing the District required additional strategies to ensure financial stability, including:

• • Reducing professional learning that would require a substitute teacher
  • Reducing how we budget for exempt salaries
  • Removing the Board’s capital contribution for future schools
  • Temporarily holding spending of schools’ additional funds over and above school supplies based on enrollments (known as school carry forwards)
  • Monitoring and not spending at the same level in Facilities
  • Requesting other revenue from the Board’s business company