A 1% overall provincial increase in educational funding falls short of staying status quo for the Hanover School Division.

Finance chair Rick Peters says their funding allotment will be an additional 2.3% compared to 3% last year on their approximately $80-million dollar budget, adding the provincial funding is 60% of HSD's total funds. Peters notes it's not necessarily a disappointing announcement but it's difficult to forecast, at this time, whether it will be enough to compensate for the continued growth in the division.

"It's hard to say at this point because we haven't put our draft budgets together yet for this next year. So, that's a tough one to answer. I think with growth in the division we'll be okay, but I can't speak a lot to that until we have our draft and we have our budgets closer to being finalized."

The 1% increase in overall provincial funding is the lowest increase since the 1990's. This increase is equivalent to $13.1-million creating a provincial budget of over $1.3-billion per year.  

The Hanover School Division says it will only issue its mill rate after March 15.