Last week, the provincial government announced they were providing $20 million in funding for 27 school divisions in the province. This funding was meant to offset some of the inflationary costs that the divisions were facing, such as fuel, bus maintenance, and insurance.  

The South East Cornerstone Public School Division provided a reaction to the funding announcement Monday morning. While the Director of Education for the division, Keith Keating, was not available for an interview, he did provide a written statement.  

“South East Cornerstone Public School Division is grateful for the one-time increase in funding to help cover inflationary costs of fuel, bus maintenance and insurance,” Keating said in the statement. “We will require some time to review the funding to best determine which inflationary pressures this added funding will be able to address.  As this appears to be one-time funding it may be difficult to utilize it for base operating pressures.” 

The South East Cornerstone Public School Division is receiving $1.3 million dollars of the $20 million to be provided throughout the province. This comes after the division announced they would be running a deficit of $6.29 million and would be eliminating 35 full-time equivalent positions. 

The Holy Family Roman Catholic Separate School Division will be receiving just over $83,000 from the province. They announced they had balanced their budget for the upcoming school year by drawing more than $800,000 from their reserves.