On November 28th, 2019, the Board of Trustees of Rocky View Schools (RVS) passed a motion to direct school administration to put together a community engagement/consultation plan to get input and feedback from the division's stakeholders into budget and program priorities for the upcoming school year, and future ones.  

On February 10th the board launched that budget consultation process with two surveys to be taken between February 10th and March 30th.  The first part of that survey, which asked for feedback from the public and RVS staff, was to be completed prior to the government tabling it's 2020 budget and asked families, staff and other people interested to identify budget priorities, cost-saving measures and revenue-generating ideas as the board prepares to put its budget together by the end of May.

That first part is now completed and a summary of the results will be released today (Tuesday, March 10th) and will be available on the RVS website.  

More than 1,000 responses were received from the public with an additional almost 700 responses from school staff.  The Chair of the RVS Board Fiona Gilbert says she didn't go into the consultation process with any expectations on how many responses they'd receive but feels the 1,700 responses they did get indicates that the public and staff are very engaged in the education system.

"I think from the staff it's about 30 percent, I haven't done the complete math but I think it's about 30 percent and I think that's a great response rate when you're trying to get some feedback.  I think as far as stakeholders and the public, I'm happy with 1,000.  That's 1,000 voices that we've heard now that we hadn't heard from a couple of weeks ago, so I'm very happy with that."

The board's budget committee used the feedback to put together the Board Budget Priorities for the upcoming year which will guide their decisions as they prepare the budget.

The second half of the survey was designed to be launched after the Alberta government budget was released.  It will be launched in mid-March.  Gilbert describes what the board hopes to get from the second half of the survey.  

"Phase two looks a little more in-depth.  So Phase one was kind of broad strokes, very general, kind of open-ended questions whereas Phase two will look to get into a little more specific questions around some of the cost savings that were suggested to help inform us of how to balance our budget.   So we got our budget priorities in Phase one and now Phase two is kind of more specific questions around some of those cost-saving ideas and revenue-generating ideas to help us balance our budget."

RVS, like every other school board in the province, must provide Alberta Education with a balanced budget by the end of May.  This year RVS will receive $2.8 million more from the government than in the 2019 interim provincial budget.  However, some of that money is to come from school reserves and "own-source revenues."  Rocky View is also anticipating continued growth in enrollment which will put more pressure on their budget.

Gilbert says the board values transparency, honesty and integrity and will endeavor to keep communities informed on how they plan to best support the needs of all Rocky View students.