Staff availability has been identified as one of the top risks for the Saskatchewan Rivers School Division, according to an update presented at the school board’s regular meeting on Feb. 2.
Director of Education Neil Finch delivered the update as part of a presentation on what the division’s Enterprise Risk Management system identified as the top concern.
Enterprise Risk Management is a system for a large organization to identify, manage and report on significant risks. The system was formally introduced by the division after nearly two years of work in Feb. 2023.
Staff availability is a risk that the division will be unable to fill all staff positions that are required for the organization. Finch said that issue has been on the division’s radar for several years.
“We’ve had staff availability concerns in the past with very specified classifications,” Finch said. “One of the ones we just talked about, which is bus drivers, but … since the world has resumed post-COVID the shortage of employee classifications has been noticeable to our organization.”
Finch said education isn’t the only sector facing staff shortages,
“It definitely is one that is concerning enough for us that we need to make sure we’ve got mitigating actions to ensure that we do everything we can to fill positions that are vacant,” Finch said.
This includes expanding and creating recruitment strategies to access more qualified applicants in all classifications, among other strategies.
“It’s just an interesting new reality for us, and so we just need to make sure that we pay attention to it,” Finch said.
The other top four risk identified in the system included declining enrolment, not having sufficient supports to respond to staff or student mental health challenges, and IT Security.
Finch said the risk of declining enrollment always exists, even in a positive year.
“The decline in enrollment, we need to pay attention to that and make sure that people are looking at us as a first-choice school vision, but we also understand when we look around the province that we’re down a couple thousand students around the province,
so we just have less young families currently in the province of Saskatchewan, not just Prince Albert,” Finch said.
IT Security is also still on the list after being an emerging issue in 2025.
“IT security is something that we’ve really put in lots of different actions over the last number of years,” Finch said. “You’ll see that in the report, reports of the different things that we are doing with IT security, but everything is about just managing that risk for our IT security.”
There was an actual IT problem in the Fall of 2023 involving internal emails in the division. Since then, they have enhanced their cyber security and added multi-factor authentication into the system.
Responding to student and staff mental health is part of the division’s Strategic Plan.
“It is a focus area already there, but we also know that it is a risk if we don’t pay attention to it at a higher level, so that’s where it lands in our risk management,” Finch said.
Finch said that the Enterprise Risk Management is a way to keep an eye on gathering storms.
“It is one of those processes that is a must for an organization just to assess what our risks are at, pay attention to them, and make sure that we meet certain areas of priority and pay attention, just so that we never put the organization at a risk that could be catastrophic,” Finch said.
There were four risks listed as top priority in 2025 but one has moved to moderate risk.
The report is generated through exercises by the Senior Administration. Risks to the school division are identified and ranked by individual members of the Senior Administration team for both the likelihood and the impact of the risk. These are then discussed and processed into a risk matrix.
Finch added that any organization the size of Saskatchewan Rivers would have risks to monitor.
An example of a catastrophic risk is something that impacts revenue by more than $1 million. Meanwhile, an insignificant risk, the lowest level, would impact revenue by less than $50,000.
The division has been growing in understanding and experience with risk management for five years. These plans and mitigation reports were shared again at the most recent meeting.
In a press release, the division said the board remains committed to risk monitoring, implementing mitigation strategies for lower-level risks and addressing and reporting on higher-level risks.
michael.oleksyn@paherald.sk.ca
