The Keewatin-Patricia District School Board says it will spend slightly less this coming school year than last year.
Superintendent of Business Richard Findlay says their budget will be around 98.9 million dollars.
“They’ve (Ministry of Education) is giving us less money, but we’re don’t have to spend as much,” explains Findlay.
“We probably had about 18 additional staff members in the classroom last year to run two virtual schools and we won’t have that this year. So we don’t need as much funding this year as we needed in the 2020/2021 school year.”
Findlay says they still have about a million dollars for COVID-19 measures, including staffing virtual classrooms.
“COVID-19 funding specifically for different pockets totalling about a million dollars. More than half of that, $574 thousand is for additional staffing supports, and that is what we’ll be tapping into, having additional teachers for virtual classrooms.”
Findlay says there is also money for enhanced cleaning in schools and busses, more mental health supports and technology due to COVID-19.
The KPDSB held a special meeting last week to pass the budget, which had to be submitted to the province by the end of June.
