A judge has ordered the Saskatchewan government to provide an additional $500,000 in funding to the province’s French school board.

The Conseil scolaire fransaskois had filed an injunction seeking $5.2 million from the government as an additional “operational subsidy” for the 2014-15 school year.

Queen’s Bench Justice Brian Barrington-Foote noted that the amount the government has been ordered to pay will cover 40 per cent of the $1.26 million the CSF has said it needs to hire back staff.

“It should accordingly significantly assist the CSF in addressing what it considers to be its most pressing issues,” Barrington-Foote said in a decision released online this week.

“The order is intended to resolve matters only until the end of the 2014-15 fiscal year… It does not preclude the CSF from applying to the court in the course of the fiscal year in the event of the change in circumstances sufficient to justify a further order.”

It’s the fifth time the court has ordered the government to give the CSF more money in their ongoing legal battle over the funding of French-language education.

In 2011, the CSF launched a lawsuit against the government, claiming that “chronic” underfunding has prevented the French school board from fully complying with the language of instruction provisions of the Charter.