Administration from the Calgary Catholic School District said it is still too early to tell how Alberta’s Budget 2025 will affect the school board despite changes to the public school funding model.
According to Budget 2025 documents, the province promised to invest $54 million in the 2025-2026 school year along with $348 million over the following two years to support additional enrolment growth.
The province also promised an increase of $55 million in funding for the 2025-2026 school year and another $94 million in each of the following two years to adjust the funding formula for school authorities. The Alberta government said this is to provide sustainable funding for growth within the new funding model.
However, no details about the new funding model were released on budget day. The province did not announce any changes to per-student funding in Budget 2025.
Chief Superintendent Bryan Szumlas said that while some grants — like the classroom complexity grant — have increased by 20 per cent as a result of additional funding from the province, it only reflects a fraction of the overall budget (less than half a per cent).
The district projected a $21.5 million deficit in its 2024-2025 District Operating Budget, which was approved last May.
“It’s a $700 million budget. We could be easily misled to believe there’s some huge increases here, but there’s some cautions that need to take place as we go forward with that,” he told trustees at Wednesday’s board meeting.
Superintendent Vanessa Klettke added the district is waiting on an exact budget sheet from Alberta Education for the 2025-2026 school year to know the details.
“Until we get the funding profile sometime in the near future, we can’t really comment on how this will impact the budget to our district,” she said.
“One thing that was announced that should benefit the district is the change in the moving average from the three-year model to a two-year model. More weight is being put on the upcoming year. Having 70 per cent of the funding impact for the 2025-2026 school year is very good news.”
Klettke added that the district received 782 responses to its budget survey, significantly higher than the 125 responses received last year.
“Hopefully, once we review when the funding comes in, we’ll be able to look at what our education shareholders are asking us to prioritize and bring forward a budget that can meet the needs within the financial constraints that we have,” she said.
Trustee Linda Wellman said she was excited to see that some grants got a 20 per cent increase in funding but her excitement was immediately dashed when she saw how marginal the increase was compared with the entire budget.
“I think we’re just going to have to wait, aren’t we, until we get the [budget sheet]. The devil is in the details,” she said at Wednesday’s board meeting.
