The Kamloops-Thompson School Board has unveiled its budget for the upcoming school year and it comes with a total that is just over $188 million.
Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, SD73 Board Chair Kathleen Karpuk says it made great strides this past year when it comes to improving student outcomes, and this budget aims to continue to focus on equity outcomes for all students.
“Making sure that every student has the supports they need in order to fully succeed and realizing that some students are going to need more supports than others. So with the pandemic, that’s really going to mean that we need to focus on some of the social and emotional needs of students.”
Karpuk says it will be putting more support into technology infrastructure and look to address social and emotional needs of students which has been more paramount during the pandemic.
“We know that there’s going to be some increased vulnerability of students, so we’ve put some money into that. We know we need to put more support into technology infrastructure because of the online nature of some of the things that we’re currently doing right now.”
The budget includes almost $150 million dollars on payroll. That pays for the 1,619 full time equivalent employees working as principals, teachers, support staff and management staff. That is an increase of 13.3 per cent from 2019.
Secretary-Treasurer Kelvin Stretch says the budget is very similar to last year.
“Certainly the COVID-19 related issues has changed the way the district has provided learning to our students and certainly technology is playing a significant roles with that. I think what we’re doing is we are anticipating slightly what our new reality will be going forward.
And we will put together ongoing plans that will deliver the supports based on whatever current reality we’re in with respect to next year. So it’s a little bit of a moving target at this point and we’re certainly going to try and remain a little bit nimble so we’re able to try to address some of the upcoming needs.”
The school board is anticipating an increase of 72 full time students next year and Stretch says that is a conservative estimate. That would bring the total number of students in the district to 15,273 full time equivalents.
