The Chinook School Division says tough decisions are ahead after the unveiling of Tuesday's provincial budget.

It's been known for a while that $30 million would be restored of the $54 million cut in the previous budget, but Chinook School Division CFO Rod Quintin said it wasn't until Tuesday that they would find out how that would be dispersed throughout the province.

"We found out yesterday what that number is, and it really is a slight reduction of about .4 of one per cent less money than we would have gotten last year - so about $260,000 less than last year's allocation that we had.

"It was a combination of our December adjusted allocation for enrollment, plus the money that we got in February for that cash infusion. We're looking at a little bit less money this year to more or less do the same thing."

The division has a couple years to balance their books, which they are legally obligated to do. Staffing reductions are very much in the picture.

"We're still looking at a need to address our operational deficit," Quintin said. "We have been doing some projections and been working with the board around how we start to address that. I think it's been fairly widely stated that we need to probably look at our staffing formula and try and achieve some staff reductions hopefully through attrition. But this has done really nothing to offset that need. Our projection in $2-2.5 million range is still there. We need to find that over the next two years in order to get back to a balanced budget."

If not enough people retire, Quintin said they might have to make cuts to staff through redundancy, which is a kind of severance.

"Our hope is that doesn't happen and we will work our hardest around our use of attrition. All that plays out over the spring until we get to the end of May and then we'll have a better idea how that will be. One of the things we also have available to us as a tool is that we get a two-year implementation. We're going to do the best we can this year, and then try and get completely to that goal next year. That's very helpful for us as administration to do that, and I think from the board's perspective it doesn't create undo stress and hardship out in school land."

Quintin added that student population growth is occurring around Saskatoon and Regina, and not the southwest, and the money is following the students.

Larger classes and more places with split classes are likely, according to Quintin.