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By: Nick Martin / Analysis

2/02/2012 8:25 AM | Comments: 0

According to the Manitoba government's math, the province covers 65.2 per cent of the cost of operating our $1.96-billion public education system.

And the government further says school divisions are paying only 29.2 per cent of the cost.

Are those figures accurate? Yes and no. Depends.

If you're an accountant, yes, those figures are probably right, and it's all on the up and up.

For the rest of us, no, the figures we're more likely to come up with using a layperson's common sense and logic are a 56.7 per cent share for the province, and a 37.4 per cent share for property taxes.

The key to sorting out the confusion can be found back in 2005-06.

That's the school year when the NDP decided property-tax credits -- the annual lump sum each homeowner receives from the province to reduce the impact of property-tax bills -- would suddenly be reinvented as an education property-tax credit.

The EPTC still came off the bottom line of homeowners' property-tax bills, but at that magic moment of bookkeeping legerdemain, the property-tax credit officially became education funding.

Between the 2004-05 school year and the 2005-06 school year, the government's share of paying for the public school system thus shot up from 56 per cent to 62.3, with a proportional drop in the school divisions' share.

But the amount of property taxes collected, and the overall amount spent on public education year to year, didn't change radically.

How come? Read on.

If you go to this year's edition of the FRAME (Financial Reporting and Accounting in Manitoba Education) report, you'll find the pie chart of revenue sources on page 40 -- 65.2 per cent province, 29.2 per cent school divisions.

Before you ask, the rest of the money comes from sources such as First Nations paying tuition to place their students in public schools and various smaller revenue sources such as rentals, fees, and assorted transfers.

Then go to page 42 and 43, which show a breakdown of revenue sources.

Under the column of education property-tax credit, there's $178,258,517 shown as provincial education revenue, a pretty big chunk of serious coin.

But here's where things get fuzzy. Not a penny of that money gets spent in schools.

Let's jump to page 49, where FRAME shows the figures for the special levy -- $734,192,180 of property taxes collected for education, or 37.4 per cent of the total of $1.96 billion.

Oops. Something's wrong here.

For the explanation, double back to page 43, where FRAME shows a much smaller amount for the annual revenue from municipal sources, an amount comprising 29.2 per cent of the total.

That's because -- with some footnotes and appendices explaining how the farmland tax rebate and pensioners' assistance enter into the calculations -- the tax credit the province puts into the system as education funding on page 42, gets deducted from the tax total listed on page 49, and comes straight back out of the public education system on page 43, listed as a reduced amount of taxes collected. All done on paper, without a penny of the $178 million ever having been spent in schools.

Convoluted, eh? Complex? Confusing?

Over its years in office, the NDP has steadily chipped away at the individual's tax hit, while increasing operating grants every year by more than the growth of provincial inflation. For instance, the province phased out the residential education support levy and replaced it with provincial grants.

And certainly, the province has increased the education property-tax credit from $250 to $700. But that tax credit is not now, nor has it ever been, operating funding for the public education system -- it's a tax-mitigation strategy. And to use it as a fleeting device to pump up the province's share of funding may seem disingenuous at best.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Get the numbers

The source of all data on annual revenue and expenses in the public school system is the FRAME report, Financial Reporting and Accounting in Manitoba Education.

FRAME reports back to the late 1990s can be found at http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/k12/finance/frame_report/index.html

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NDP's math on funding a bit tricky