A week after receiving an increase in funding from the provincial government, the Chinook School Division shared their planned intentions for the $296,800.

The school division will use the money to try to help balance the books, according to Rod Quintin, the chief financial officer with Chinook.

"It will be used to offset part of our deficit in our current year," he said Monday afternoon. "We've been monitoring where we're at in terms of this year's budget implementation and we're pretty much right on, so what it would really result in is that our deficit would be reduced."

Currently the division is looking at a deficit of $2.7 million, so the added funds will help them alleviate the number a bit.

"We don't know what more money may be coming," he explained. "We will consider that [possibility] and this [amount] into our plans going forward."

Quintin said they have received direction from the board to address the deficit over a two-year period to balance the books for the 2019-20 fiscal year.

"That's our framework that we're working within," he said. "What we don't know is the exact number of dollars that we may receive in the April budget announcement."

He noted the division has been forthcoming with the public about not having much room for cuts outside of the classroom and if they get more cuts they are pretty much limited to things that are classroom related.