Horizon relatively happy with new provincial budget

By Cole Parkinson
Taber Times
cparkinson@tabertimes.com

With the release of a new provincial budget, Horizon School Division can start fully developing its own version. And overall, Horizon administration was pretty happy with what they saw in the newest budget.

“They gave us a little bit more detail in a meeting. I have to say this is probably the earliest budget announcement we have ever received, however, (there are) details we will have to wait for, basically until the end of March. We won’t have our funding profiles and funding manual,” explained Phil Johansen, associate superintendent of finance and operations at Horizon’s school board meeting on Feb. 28. “Some of the highlights though from the announcement were, they said it was the second balanced budget in the last 10 years. So, the province is actually doing a balanced budget. In education, what they are doing is increasing the basic instruction grants by 4.5 per cent, the operations and maintenance grants by one per cent, and the transportation grant by 4.6 per cent.”

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