Tight budget leads to belt tightening for Wild Rose School Division

“Same with maintenance,” he notes. “You start to fall behind if you don’t have a large enough staff to keep up, and we’re managing. The biggest thing is we’re having to run a deficit in that particular part of our budget.”

This is the first year that WRSD has contracted out bussing services in Rocky Mountain House, a move Volkman says has gone well.

“Prairie Bus Lines, who was awarded that contract, bought our busses and I think have hired most of our drivers back, if not all. I think for the average family they’re probably not noticing much difference.”

The division is also taking a close look at how many schools it is operating as it looks into further cost savings.

David Thompson High School is already slated for closure, with students possibly moving to Leslieville if their school is modernized as is being looked at, with more changes on the way in Drayton Valley.

“We’re going to have a new (elementary) school opening soon. We’re going to be having a public meeting in early November when wele’re going to talk about what’s the next step now,” he explains.

“We can’t add buildings without our students (population) going up because we can’t operate them. So does this mean we have an older building that maybe we can close down? Those are discussions we’re going to have with the community.”

The bottom line, Volkman says, is that the current education funding model in Alberta doesn’t work.

“This is an issue that not just our school division, but many rural school divisions with declining enrolment will be bringing to the government. It really doesn’t make sense to base our funding on student numbers when our geographic region doesn’t change and the size of our buildings doesn’t change.”

by Adam Ophus

Tight budget leads to belt tightening for Wild Rose School Division

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