The provincial government announced this week that they will be lower education mill rates across all property classes.
In a press release, the province said their commitment to affordability for all residents, agricultural land owners, businesses and corporations operating in the province will include a reduction in Education Property Tax mill rates in the 2025-26 Budget.
Shawn Davidson the President of the Saskatchewan School Boards Association (SSBA) said that his initial reaction to the announcement was surprise.
“I think that when it was initially spoken about at the SARM Convention the actual impact was not completely clear,” Davidson said. “The next day the premier actually came and spoke and said what they’re doing is a mill rate reduction such that the collection of education property tax will be revenue neutral.”
He explained that this year is a reassessment year and taxable assessments will go up but mill rates will stay the same and that creates some additional revenue.
“We’ve seen the government do this in the central setting of the mill rate, previously on reassessment years. What they typically have done is adjusted the mill rate such that the collection of education property tax is revenue neutral,” he said.
The 2024 Mill Rates for Agricultural were 1.42 and they will decrease to 1.07, for Residential they were 4.54 in 2024 and in 2025 they will be 4.27, in Commercial they were 6.86 in 2024 and in 2025 they will be 6.27 and in Resource they were 9.88 in 2024 and in 2025 they will be 9.88 and in 2025 they will be 7.49.
“This is really not out of the realm of what we’ve seen before,” Davidson said.
He said that the key point was the changes made by the province in 2009 to take away mill rate power from school divisions and divisions no longer have a say in revenue collected through property taxes.
“Prior to 2009, we set our own local mill rates and the municipalities collected tax on behalf of school divisions and then forwarded it to school divisions. Since then, well, it still was funded directly to school divisions for a few years after the 2009 change, but now—and for several years now—education property taxes are collected by the municipalities and submitted directly to the General Revenue Fund, and then it’s redistributed back to school divisions through the school division funding formula and funding distribution model.”
Davidson said that as long as the government has identified adequate revenue streams to fund the education sector, school divisions will be all right.
“They centralized the mill rate as a matter of fairness because at the time there were some dramatically different education property tax levels from one school division to another and there were lots of reasons for that,” he said
“Our Members saw the loss of some of their autonomy and some of their ability to make budget decisions in the best interests of the local communities when we lost access to the tax base.”
Davidson said that they understood that the province wanted to do in terms of fairness and standardizing mill rates across school divisions. But they also expected that when tax collection was centralized, the government would accept the obligation to “adequately and sustainably” fund education.
Davidson said that the first several years after the change the government did meet the obligation and keep pace with cost drivers like inflation and enrolment growth.
“In the last seven or eight years, though, that hasn’t been the case, and divisions have had to make a lot of really difficult decisions,” Davidson said.
He said that the SSBA will be looking at the budget very closely on March 19 at what decisions the government makes around funding of education.
“We know that we’ve got some very significant cost drivers that we’re facing for the next school year,” Davidson said.
Some examples of cost drivers in school divisions included the new teacher’s collective bargaining agreement, enrollment growth and inflationary costs that are driven by the uncertainty surrounding tariffs and the oncoming trade war with the United States.
He said if those cost drivers are addressed school divisions will be able to operate at the same capacity they have been operating at.
“School divisions are watching this very closely because if the government doesn’t adequately fund the education sector, we’re going to be looking at a very challenging year,” Davidson said.
“But now, over and above that, we would love to see some further investment in the education sector. By that I mean all of our cost drivers are covered and then there’s some additional investment of dollars that school divisions can then use to provide additional supports for students, which we know are needed.”
He said that the SSBA has heard from the public that there are additional needs in schools that school divisions have not been able to cover because of the funding challenges in recent budgets.
“There’s been some services that have been reduced because our budgets have not met our cost drivers during that period of time. As we as we move forward, we’ll be looking for the government to, over time, close that funding gap that we’ve experienced dating back to the 2017 budget. As that gap closes, we will be able to provide better services and better outcome for kids,” Davidson said.
He also said that the SSBA will be focused on capital investments including new school builds and the Preventative Maintenance and Renewal (PMR) budget.
“Some of our infrastructure is aging. We need (assistance) for rural school divisions in particular. We know we have to do a really good job of looking after our buildings because new school builds in smaller communities are not particularly common,” Davidson said.
One example of a new rural school project that has not been funded is the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division request to amalgamate the schools in Shellbrook, which has been a top capital priority in the division for several years.
“The facilities we have now, taking good care of them is important and we need to ensure we’ve got enough preventative maintenance dollars to be able to do a good job of that,” Davidson said.
The provincial budget will be delivered on March 19.
-With files from Jason Kerr/Daily Herald
