Time for a new funding formula

The Mountain View and Beautiful Plains school divisions have approved their 2026-27 budgets, and each division’s budget includes a substantial hike in property taxes. The increase is 7.24 per cent for Mountain View, and a staggering 10.4 per cent for Beautiful Plains taxpayers to shoulder.

The situation playing in Mountain View and Beautiful Plains is similar to that which is unfolding in school divisions throughout the province. Park West School Division is proposing a 10.12 per cent increase in school taxes for the 2027 calendar year as part of its draft 2026-27 budget. Brandon School Division trustees recently approved a 7.25 per cent increase. The tax increases in some other divisions are even higher.

This news should not come as a surprise to those who have been following the school funding issue over the past several years. Last fall, we noted that the provincial government was in the process of implementing the province-wide harmonization of teachers’ salaries, and that school divisions — rural divisions in particular — would bear the brunt of that cost.

Many divisions have received some additional funding from the province to offset the added harmonization expense, but the extra funding has been inconsistently distributed among divisions and has failed to prevent large tax hikes from occurring. For example, Beautiful Plains received $200,000 from the province for harmonization costs, while Mountain View received nothing.

To make matters even worse, Mountain View received the lowest overall funding increase from the province, while Beautiful Plains received the second-lowest increase. That financial squeeze has resulted in the elimination of one full-time staffing position from the Beautiful Plains budget. Park West also appears to be projecting the reduction of one half-time teaching position.

This annual funding anxiety, often resulting in higher-than-inflation tax increases and reduced services in schools, is both unacceptable and unsustainable — a point that has been made many times over the past several years.

In 2023, the former Progressive Conservative government released a draft funding framework that was based upon feedback provided by leaders in all of the province’s 37 public school divisions. The new model would allocate resources based on student need, give boards more flexibility on spending to meet local needs, outline clear reporting requirements, ensure divisions could plan for the future and be straightforward so the public could understand how it works.

It was said to reflect school division leaders’ desire for a simpler education funding scheme that reflected socio-economic factors, allowed for long-term planning and directed more money to both support Indigenous students and integrate traditional knowledge into classrooms.

The plan seemed to be a viable approach, and an improvement over the existing situation. Its implementation was pushed off until after the 2023 provincial election, however, and the Tory plan vanished following the election of the Kinew NDP government. Four months after that election, then-education minister Nello Altomare said in a news release that “Funding will be stable and predictable for divisions while we develop a new funding model for the next fiscal year.” That new model never materialized, however.

Current minister Tracey Schmidt told the media 13 months ago that the overhaul was ongoing and the government had revived an advisory group on the issue. She said at the time that “We can all agree that the school funding formula needs some work — that the way that it exists today, without necessary adjustments, perpetuates somewhat we might call inequities.”

That was a year ago. No progress has been made, no new formula is in place and taxpayers and students in school divisions all over the province are paying the price for that delay, in the form of higher taxes and, in many cases, fewer services and larger class sizes.

At some point, Manitoba’s education funding farce must come to an end. Schmidt herself admits that the existing formula “perpetuates inequities,” but talk is cheap and it’s getting us nowhere.

It’s time for real leadership on the education funding issue. It’s time for a plan that addresses those inequities. If this minister can’t or won’t provide it, maybe it’s also time for a new minister.