The Pembina Hills school division finished the 2014 financial year with a $1.31 million operating surplus, while the Alberta Distance Learning Centre (ADLC) was just slightly in the black with a $130,000 operating surplus.
That was the news from secretary-treasurer Tracy Meunier as she delivered the division’s 2014 audited financial statements to the Pembina Hills trustees at their meeting last Wednesday at Fort Assiniboine School. Trustees ultimately passed a motion approving the audited financial statements for Pembina Hills and the ADLC for public release.
The statements covered Pembina Hills’ 2014 financial year beginning on Sept. 1, 2013 and ending on Aug. 31, 2014.
Meunier said she would be reviewing the financial statements again at the board’s Dec. 10 meeting, where the statements will be broken down by individual schools and the co-op pool.
She indicated Pembina Hills finished the year with $57.5 million in revenue and $55.74 million in expenses for a $1.31 million surplus.
This was the second year in a row that the division finished the year with a surplus, albeit a smaller one than the $1.74 million surplus Pembina Hills had at the end of 2013.
Pembina Hills had originally projected a balanced budget of $51.38 million. While most of their projections were accurate, they received roughly $4.99 million more in funding from Alberta Education and spent approximately $3.5 million more on instruction than originally budgeted.
Meunier noted that the $1.31 million surplus includes $1.13 million in one-time budget mitigation funding allocated by the province.
When the province implemented various funding adjustments in 2013, including cuts to a number of programs, they looked at what school divisions would have received before the cuts and awarded them all budget mitigation funding, she said.
Although Pembina Hills could have spent the funding as it saw fit, the division never designated that money, so it was simply reported as revenue in the budget documents.
It should be noted that Pembina Hills had originally projected ending the 2013-2014 financial year with a $444,122 operating deficit.
“Had we not gotten the budget mitigation funding, we would only have had a surplus of $200,000, which in my mind is really, really close to what we projected (for 2013-2014),” said Meunier.
When reviewing a statement of revenue and expenses from different departments, Meunier noted they finished with a $535,000 deficit in transportation. This is due entirely to the loss of the provincial Fuel Price Contingency grant, which was eliminated in the 2013 provincial budget.
Meunier put forward a recommendation for the board to cover the transportation deficit using $500,000 in budget mitigation funding, which would leave the division with $600,000 remaining.
As for the ADLC, Meunier reported that the centre took in $25.84 million in revenue this year and saw expenses of $25.71 million — a surplus of $133,000.
It should be noted that Pembina Hills had originally projected ADLC to finish the year with a balanced budget, or zero surplus.
Meunier also noted they finished the year with a “substantially” higher cash flow than the previous year.
They had close to $12 million in cash and cash equivalents at the end of the 2014 financial year, as opposed to $7.08 million in 2013.
Meunier clarified for the board that Pembina Hills still had $2 million in cash left over from the $3.6 million advanced to the division by the province to pay for modulars at Pembina North Community School.
“We’ve only done $1.5 million of work so far. There’s still $2 million sitting in the bank waiting for modernization,” she said.
She added the division also has $500,000 in leftover IMR (Infrastructure, Maintenance and Renewal) funding that hasn’t been spent yet.
