Documents obtained by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation appears to show one school board in the province is getting better treatment than the rest.

Could it be that Ministry of Education lets the Prairie Valley School Division (PVSD) play by its own set of rules? Or did the ministry become sloppy with watchdogging school boards?

Here’s what’s going on and why taxpayers in the rest of Saskatchewan should care.

First, recall that as of 2009, the provincial government set a province-wide school tax rate and then gave school boards virtually all of their funding through capital and operating grants.

As a result, a school division couldn’t just go out and build a new school; the education ministry needed to approve the funding for it.

But, if you look at the Prairie Valley School Division’s 2011-12 budget, you’ll see it planned to spend $27 million in future capital projects that were to be paid for with its own money.

Many wondered where PVSD would get all the money if it didn’t receive it from the provincial government? Was the school division planning a giant $27 million bake sale to pay for it?

Surprisingly, part of the division’s ambitious spending plan included a $6.3 million expansion to the school board office even though the number of students in the division had been dropping.

The school division office expansion and other projects on the division’s list didn’t receive funding from the province for a good reason – they weren’t deemed to be priorities.

After courageous whistleblowers brought these concerns to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s (CTF) attention, we decided to investigate the situation.

In a response to a CTF letter, the previous Education Minister, indicated the Prairie Valley School Division (PVSD) doesn’t actually have funds set aside for the $27 million for its projects. She noted:

“The ministry has reviewed the audited financial statements of the PVSD and has not identified a specific reserve dedicated to entirely funding the projects you reference, and therefore the ministry cannot identify a funding accumulation by PVSD for this purpose.”

The Minister went on to suggest how the projects would be paid for:

“Prairie Valley’s financial statements point to the division utilizing a pay-as-you-go approach to financing their capital projects.”

Under this new “pay-as-you-go” model, the Prairie Valley School Division will have to use a portion of operating grants to pay for this massive bill. In other words, the division would use funding it received from the province for teachers’ salaries, textbooks and other materials to pay for the board office expansion and other new buildings.

Further, documents obtained by the CTF show Prairie Valley is essentially the only division using the mysterious new “pay-as-you-go” model. The only other division using it had the vast majority of the funds already saved up for its small project so it’s not really in the same category.

So why does all this matter? Well consider that the PVSD complained to the ministry this year about its operating funding.

The Ministry later announced in the 2012-13 provincial budget a new $10 million fund to help boards ease into the new funding formula. To the Prairie Valley School Division’s delight, they will receive $6.5 million of the $10 million fund this year according to documents obtained by the CTF.

However, many boards are going to lose funds in the process. Regina School Division #4 will lose $2.8 million, Saskatoon School Division #13 will lose $1.7 million, Regina Catholic will lose $1.5 million and Prince Albert will lose $327,521.

If this isn’t special treatment then what is it? Try asking your school board trustees what they think.