The Chinook School Division held their 2015-2016 Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Swift Current on Monday night.

The AGM took place at the Chinook Education Centre with a large crowd on hand who learned that the school division has recorded a surplus for the year. A deficit was originally anticipated by the school board when they initially unveiled the 2015-2016 budget. What was projected as a $2.7 million deficit turned into a $1.3 million surplus as recorded by the board.

Approximately $1.9 million of the $4 million difference came from saving in two expenditures; building operating expenses ($775,372) and instructional salaries ($1,195,200).

"It was driven by two main factors," Chinook School Division Chief Financial Officer Rod Quintin said. "One was our lower than anticipated costs for energy, which would be related to the mild winter and lower prices. The other would have been our lower than anticipated costs for in particular teachers, where we didn't experience extraordinary type of teacher absences that might come from long-term illness leaves."

Another significant reason why the school division was able to register a surplus was an overall increase in revenue. An unexpected $2.1 million came in for the school division, with $1.9 million of that coming from capital grants.

"On the revenue side, primarily it was getting $1.6 million to add four classrooms to École Centennial School," Quintin stated.

The remaining $300,000 from capital grants, money given by the Provincial Government, came from preventative maintenance and repairs (PMR). The board had initially budgeted approximately $1.1 million for PMR. After the provincial budget was released, that number grew to $1.4 million.

"Let's just say we have a roof that is nearing the end of its life cycle," he said. "In the past, we would have had to apply for funding, waiting for whatever number of months or years for the government to approve funding.

"Now we're given that funding on the condition that we use it for things like repairing roofs and then we can select on our timeframe when we would make that repair."

He adds that this would allow the school division to have more freedom with the timeline of repairs.

"We would prevent that collateral damage that you might see by having your roof leak and stop that extra cost. We can also time the roofing project in such a way that, we can maybe get the best advantage in pricing," he said.

The PMR was implemented three years ago in 2014, and the rate dolled out by the government has increased every year to date (2015-16).

The Chinook School Division's net worth after nine years in existence is approximately $108 million, with upwards of $83.8 million being tangible assets.

"I think the difference between Chinook and other (school divisions), is that we're always finding efficiencies. For example, we have been converting our building management systems from a manually operated system to an automated system for the last several years," Quintin said. "Those are things we've been doing all along, so we tend not to make a big splash. We will do things all along and keep finding new efficiencies as we go."

Another big efficiency Chinook School Division has started to apply is changing their lighting in all their facilities from incandescent, fluorescent or metal halide to LED saving the division a substantial amount of money.