After months of crunching numbers and planning, the Hanover School Division has approved a balanced budget of $99,738,600.

Along the way, some cuts had to be made.

“Probably the biggest cut was the reduction in teacher positions which was 16,” says Finance Committee Chair Rick Peters. “With less students, it means less teachers in the division.”

He notes this reduction in teaching staff will not impact classroom sizes.

“It won’t impact permanent teachers; we just won’t be able to renew some of the term teachers that we had in the division,” Peters says. “But as an overall impact to classrooms, there won’t be an impact.”

perty tax freeze impacts the budget as well as the decline in enrollment.

“When it’s less students in the division overall, that’s sort of a given that we can’t employ as many people when we don’t have as many students,” he says. “So that’s one place to look at.”

The board also looked at areas where they could delay spending.

“We can extend the life of our school buses, and if we take two new school bus purchases out for example, that’s a quarter of a million dollars out of the budget then.”

The division cut out the purchase of two new school buses which saved $258,000. Two other cuts include the removal of $100,000 from the Maintenance Programs along with a $125,000 cut from IT CORE Infrastructure Upgrades.

The $99,738,600 budget for the 2022/23 school year shows 36.2 percent of revenue coming from property taxation. There will be a savings of around $59 on a home assessed at approximately $259,100 in Hanover.