Huron Perth Catholic District School Board Balances Budget Estimates For 2024-2025

by Bob Montgomery

The Huron-Perth Catholic District School Board has just submitted a balanced and compliant budget for the 2024-2025 fiscal year.

Director Chris Roehrig says the ministry does allow some flexibility in certain situations, but generally expects school boards to file a balanced budget so they were pleased that they were able to do that. The biggest challenge they faced was the one all school boards struggled with and that was keeping up with inflation. “There were changes to the revenue bench marks to adjust to inflation in certain areas and to adjust for salary and benefit increases. So our overall revenue is up and it's mostly the result of salary and benefit increases that were part of the central bargaining that's been happening over the last two years.”

Sick leave has also been a challenge across the province and that's been increasing since 2008. It's not as big of a challenge for them as it is in some school boards and their forecasting is improving, so they expect that to be reduced next year. Enrolment has been relatively flat with their board, elementary is up slightly and secondary is down slightly but neither fluctuation is significant.

Roehrig says their ratepayers and their trustees expected them to able to balance their budget and he's pleased that so far they've been able to do that.