The Cariboo-Chilcotin School District will have an accumulated operating surplus of $4.9 million.
The school district operating revenue for the year is $55.8 million, with the district having $51.5 million in expenses.
Norine Durbon, the secretary-treasurer for the school district, said that financially things look pretty much the same, except they were unexpended.
“We weren’t able to pull off a lot of things that we normally would have done in a school year because of COVID,” she said. “Reduced all of our travel, our First Nations or aboriginal education has been unexpended by about $500,000, which is unfortunate because we usually do a lot of cultural events in the spring, the school field trips, we have conferences, we didn’t have to expend as much in fuel, things like that, that contributed to a very large surplus.”
Over 96 per cent of the district’s revenue is coming from provincial grants.
Seventy-three per cent of expenses will be spent on instructions, 14 per cent on operations and maintenance, seven per cent on transportation and housing, and six per cent on administration.
Durbon said that the surplus is a welcomed sight as they deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and the possible expenses.
“As we move forward through this COVID landscape, we know there’s a lot of things we want to get put into place, but we also have a chunk of money coming from the province, the federal government,” she said. “We have a lot to discuss, and then as this fall continues, we have to our amended budget by February 28, 2021, so we will also be able to make more plans as our months roll out, and we see how our COVID starts to impact things. Hopefully, being rural, we won’t see the major impacts that they will at the lower mainland. We’re trying to figure out what we need to do, make sure everybody can stay in school, keep up with all of our clean protocols, get some more technology going, all those wonderful things.”
Durbon added that there funding should be reasonably stable for the 2020/2021 school year.