It's been a year of looking ahead with cautious optimism for the Pine Creek School Division. Superintendent Bruce Lyons says much of his time lately has been devoted to the upcoming budget for the school yea,r and the cuts that have been made to their funding, despite an increase in costs.

"A cut of nearly $130,000 to our school division which was pretty significant. We're a small school division here. So in response, the Board at that time set a fairly modest increase -- of course that was offset by reducing a lot of expenses within the operating budget. Then there were wage increases and inflation that caused overall expenses to rise substantially."

Lyons notes the divsion is hoping  the government does not repeal its funding agreemen,t even though it is being advised to do so. He says if the agreement is repealed, the division could be out over $600,000. Lyons is worried this extra cost would be transferred to taxpayers, or result in large cuts to the operating budget.

"I know this government is really committed to austerity. If the formula guarantee gets dropped, we're looking at a $650,000 hit next year (which) is really significant on a 15 million dollar budget."