School divisions are working to finalize budget and trustees with the Turtle Mountain School Division hope to keep any expenditure increase to a minimum.

Funding for the Manitoba school system will increase by $120 million in the upcoming school year, including $43 million increase in annual funding and additional one-time funding of $77 million to address incremental wage costs and other pressures.

Turtle Mountain Superintendent Grant Wiesner points out this month’s provincial education funding announcement keeps them basically at status quo.

“We haven’t lost much but we haven’t gain much either. It keeps us moving forward and it’s nice to know there wasn’t a significant decrease in funding from the province.”

The annual funding includes an increase of $18 million for public schools, $2.2 million for independent schools and a $23.2 million increase to the Property Tax Offset Grant. To reduce the burden from ratepayers, education property taxes will remain frozen and the increase to the Property Tax Offset Grant is equivalent to two per cent.

“We’re just in the thick of budget deliberations. It looks similar to the past few years. We have to look at things like enrollment projections to determine the final number of staffing. But it looks much better than we thought it would be.”

Enrollment numbers as of the end of January indicates a slight decrease in the number of students. “Hopefully it picks up and it typically does” said Wiesner.

“Our expenditures run around $14.3 million for operating expenses. As we all know there have been increases in diesel fuel, heating costs and our insurance costs have gone up. So there are things out of our control and we’ll do our best to mitigate those. With those things there might be a slight increase to our expenses.”

Trustees have to mid March to approve a budget.