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Tuesday, 25 March 2008 19:00 |
Today’s budget announcement presented a total increase over the prior year Grants for Student Needs (GSNs) of $315M or 1.7%. Details of individual school board grant allocations will be released tomorrow, March 26th.
A large portion of the grants announced today, were previously announced by the government prior to today’s budget. These include the following:
Funding Previously Announced
Date Amount Grant Increase
Aug 2007 $127M $10M Administration benchmarks to small boards
$10M Transportation
$10M ESL
$10M Program Enhancement Grant
$10M Growth Schools
$10M School Operations benchmark
$10M Special Education
$50M Benefits benchmarks
$ 7M Continuing Education
Sept 2007 $43M Safe schools and implementation of Bill 212
Jan 2008 $147M $103M for end of contract provision of 0.7%
$44M for 10 minutes of additional prep in Elementary
Feb 2008 $13M Community use of schools including $6M for
community outreach workers
New GSN Funding Announced
Today’s announcement included a further increase of $57M for Special Education. This funding increase is intended to provide stable funding for high needs students until Special Education funding review is completed. Increases have also been provided for the claims based portion of Special Education funding (SIP, SEA and Section 23).
A further $10M will be targeted to urban high schools to help address additional resource requirements to promote safety in these schools.
$5M has been identified to further support Aboriginal Education.
The total of grant increases identified above amount to approximately $402M. The difference between the $315M increase announced in the Provincial Budget and the actual program grant increases totalling $402M results from the reinvestment of some of the funds generated through declining enrolment province-wide. (The projected decrease in enrolment province-wide is 26,000 students).
Funding for Capital
The Province also announced additional funding for capital of $750M. This includes $250M to continue with GPL funding for 2008-09 projects. This increase is over and above previously announced GPL funding. Also included is $500M for new capital projects to be identified and approved by the Ministry of Education.
Additional Funding for Specific Provincial Initiatives
Additional grants outside the GSNs were also identified for specific provincial initiatives. These are one-time funds, targeted for specific purposes and require separate Ministry reporting. Today’s announcement included the following:
$8M for Literacy and Numeracy
$10M for Student Literacy (including library staff and resources)
$16M for Pathways to Education
$50M for Students at Risk
$10M for Student Nutrition
$2M for additional parenting centres
$3M for environmental education
$14M for Safe Schools
$24M for Special Education
Summary
The Ministry of Education will release the detailed GSNs tomorrow. It is expected that there will be some improvements to the benchmarks for utilities and transportation. There are no funding announcements on school pools and aquatic programming.
Budget staff will prepare a detailed analysis of the impact of the grants for TDSB following tomorrow’s announcement and will work on revising the funding gap calculation for 2008-09. Staff will be presenting the revised funding gap, grant impacts and detailed expenditure analysis at the next Trustee Budget Information session on April 8th .
I will keep this site updated to keep you informed as details become available.
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