The West Vancouver School District has passed a balanced “status quo” budget for the 2015/2016 year, but administrators warn that’s heavily dependent on revenue from international students plus a large chunk of surplus from previous years.
About 16 per cent of the school district’s revenue comes from locally generated cash, including $8.4 million from fee-paying international students and $1.5 million from specialized fee-based sports academies, band classes, leases and earned interest.
Without that cash, the school district wouldn’t be able to offer the same programs, administrators said.
Even with the money, the school district will have to spend $1.9 million in accumulated surplus next year to balance its approximately $67-million operating budget.
The operating grant from the province, including money based on student enrolment plus an amount for the teachers’ negotiated wage increase, is expected to be $55.2 million for the next school year.
Salaries and benefits make up 88 per cent of the operating budget.
This year, the province ordered all school districts to cut an extra amount in “administrative savings” from their budgets.
In West Vancouver, administrators have earmarked $537,000 in cuts — $334,000 has been chopped from the 2015/16 budget while the rest will be taken out of the 2016/17 budget.
Among the items cut are a transportation subsidy for international students, various computer hardware and software upgrades, vehicle purchases, retirement gifts and school trustee travel expenses. A temporary administrative clerk’s job has also not been renewed.
Schools superintendent Chris Kennedy said enrolment in the school district is expected to remain relatively stable next year at about 7,200 students. That includes about 550 international students.
Kennedy said one noticeable trend is that while international students typically used to stay only one year, “now students are wanting to stay multiple years and graduate.”
Kennedy said fees from overseas students help provide programs for local students. “We are definitely reliant on international education” to balance the budget, he said.
“Those monies have become part of our core budget process.”
The North Vancouver School District, with about twice the number of students as West Vancouver, has also managed to nip and tuck its way to a balanced operating budget of just under $145 million for the next school year. The budget for North Vancouver schools also relies on locally generated revenue, including money from international students and sports academies.
North Vancouver also used $1.9 million in surplus to balance its budget.
