The Foothills School Division remains cautiously optimistic of the outcome from the Province's new budget.

FSD Superintendent of Corporate Services, Drew Chipman says while they don't know many details yet, they have been told they can expect an increase in funding from the previous budget.

"We've attended a few meetings in Edmonton and have been privy to a few conversations through conference calls with the department and their preliminaries are showing there is some additional funding." He says "Until we get the exact numbers it's hard to say if we'll be winners or losers but until we get detailed information, we're holding off judgement."

Many were worried there would be continued cuts that could lead to teacher and staff layoffs through the Division, but Chipman says as things stand now, they're pleased with the direction the Education Ministry is headed.

"I don't think we're worried, we like the direction they're going from an assurance perspective to make sure that we're communicating and talking with our stakeholders, we're getting them involved and sharing priorities. We're all trying to do a better job of talking to the communities and understanding their priorities, so I don't think we were worried about some of the changes or direction but instead it was more worry about what the actual dollars were going to turn into."

FSD Superintendent Chris Fuzessy says the division was told the Province was going to aim to maintain funding across the board.

"We heard that the commitment from the Government was to maintain funding for education over the next couple of years. We do see that in this budget, and the only thing is that at this point we're only looking at draft numbers until the final data collection is conducted by Alberta Education, so cautious optimism is going to remain in place until we see the final numbers and can understand the final parameters in more depth."

More detailed numbers are expected to reach the school division by the end of April.

 

Questions, comments, or story ideas? Email news@okotoksonline.com