It wasn't just a 'Celebration of Learning' night earlier this week as Chinook School Division also revealed a much smaller-than-expected deficit for the last school year.

Originally the projected operational deficit was pegged at $5.27 million for the 2016-17 fiscal year, but after the final numbers came through the deficit was reported to be $965,682.

Rod Quintin, the chief financial officer with Chinook School Division, said they were absolutely happy to reduce the deficit by so much as below-budget staffing costs helped save a lot of money, among a few others factors.

"Another large one would be that we altered mid-year a lot of our plans related to our professional development and found ways to reduce our professional development cost," he explained Thursday morning. "We were able to still maintain a reasonable amount of professional development."

Lower-than-anticipated energy prices also helped lessen the loss with both natural gas and gas prices being more favourable than what the school division predicted.

"It makes a huge difference for us because that is a large cost factor for us," he said. "Now it doesn't hurt when the winter weather is milder too, so we're required to heat our spaces as much."

The school division recorded an extra $225,000 more than forecast, pushing the total revenue to $87.75 million. While the revenue was up a bit the expenditures numbers came in $4.5 million under budget to $88.7 million.

During the event held at the Living Sky Casino Event Centre, the school division also announced their intent to balance the books by 2019-20 - something that will result in the loss of 28 teachers through natural attrition, retirement, resignations, managing vacancies, and layoffs.

"Well the staff costs are still the majority of our budget," Quintin stated. "It would be very difficult to create a balanced budget without at least addressing staff costs... When 70 per cent of our costs is related to staff, it's very difficult to find a lot of money out of the other 30 per cent of our budget."

Quintin said during the 11 years since Chinook School Division amalgamated they've recorded a surplus most of the time which has helped them upgrade their facilities.