The Horizon School Division board and management team is prepared to present the 2017-18 budget to the Ministry of Education.

The price-tag for the system that covers 41 schools and 6,400 students is estimated at $82.3 million.

Efficiencies were found with administrative costs, they trimmed those by 9.4 percent. Governance funding was nearly cut in half at 48.4 percent.

Director of Education Kevin Garinger says that puts some strain on the board but they will work with the circumstances.

"It's going to make it challenging for the board to be able to do their work but they've worked extremely hard on that component of their budget as well as the entire budget for the school division. We feel we're in as good as a place as we can be."

They didn't have to lay any teachers off, there are 14 less working in the division but those were extinguished through attrition and other areas. Despite that drop Garinger still promotes their people-teacher ratio(PTR).

"We're in a situation where we have been able to manage our teachers in a way that we've continued to sustain excellent PTRs in the province. We were ranked fourth and at the end of this I'm certain that we'll probably be either third or fourth in terms of the lowest PTR in Saskatchewan."

The budget comes with a deficit of $1.3 million, with non-cash expenditures and capital investments they will need to take $3.3 from reserves to balance it. The "capital investment" savings include the building of a new HSD head office in Humboldt, that will be more cost effective than leasing their current space in the Olymel building.

Garinger expects the proposal to move forward with no concerns from the Ministry.

"We don't expect that there should be any issues from the Ministry stand point. The big piece of course is the building project and as I've mentioned the Ministry is supportive of that so we're certainly in a place where we're able to move forward."

There are 28 school divisions in Saskatchewan, the HSD is the tenth largest based on enrollment.

You can hear more from Garinger below who spoke with Bolt FM's Clark Stork Thursday afternoon.