The nitty gritty of the annual meeting of the Evansville School Board is the motion to levy the taxes for the coming period. However, it also provides the District Administrator a chance to share the goals of the district for the coming year as well as the finacial details.
Supr. Heidi Garvin explained in the packet of information, that because the state of Wisconsin uses a "three year rolling average" formula, a growing district such as Evansville that enrolled 60 new students this year, only received funding for 20. That means larger classes.
In addition, she added, "We have been eliminating Reading Support and classroom educational asssistant positions at the k-5 level over the last three years to cover additional support needed in Special Education, and to add classroom teachers. We have cut those positions as far back as I feel we can."
Heidi Garvin also addressed the impact of energy costs on instructional improvements===The budget amount for heat has been increased by $67,000 for the 2005-06 school year. This has had to be taken from money that was to be used for instructional improvements. It looks like more of the same next year as the projected increase for next year is also 70 students.
Deb Olsen responded to one of the concerns raised by recent press from the Wis. Taxpayers Alliance, and said that the appreciation assumption of valuation in the property in the district was 4% per year and this was conservative. This seemed to calm any concerns about the the structure of the bond financing.
Heidi Garvin shared that as far as enrollment and space, the challenge for the district appears to be in 2015 in the intermediate school and the school has some ideas on how this could be dealt with.
Heidi Garvin also wrote in her packet that "The strategy of state government seems to be to pit the interests of schools and children against those of property tax payers who are trying to make ends meet. Meanwhile commercial and manufacturing are paying smaller and smaller percentages." The Observer agrees.
Other comments from the meeting can be viewed on earliers posts. Thanks to all who attended.
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Why is it when the school district needs to come up with extra money they ' cut back' on programs or services that are needed for the kids, instead of eliminating a staff position in the district office or else where. No they start right in with the program for the kids. Nice. It will come back to bite them in the butt. We spoke with the D.P.I. and their comment was when you cut special service funds, such as for the reading assistance, it comes back to get you in the results from ' The no child left behind ' testing, which the school needs the kids to do well on to continue to receive funds from the federal govt.
ReplyDeletePerhaps alwayspackerfan can suggest which "staff position" to cut - and why? Has alwayspackerfan been in the school lately to observe what the teachers and staff do? Is alwayspackerfan a member of any school committee or a volunteer in any way? Has he/she run for the school board?
ReplyDeleteIt is so easy to say eliminate a staff position, but that might be more difficult if he/she knew what those people do for our children. Further, such a move could create additional problems that necessitate budget increases on the long term.
This district runs a budget in the millions of dollars, and like any business of equivalent size, administrators are needed to certain jobs. The entire staff cannot all be teachers.
I do not want to denigrate anyone for showing an interest in schools; however, problems are generally complex and require less simplistic solutions than merely eliminating a staff position.
So it would be easier to eliminate programs for the kids? than a staff position? PRIORITIES PLEASE. YES,I am in the school quite often, 2-3x a week. I do volunteer, and that is probably how I can say eliminate some staff in the district office, I see the waste of time by some of these people, and the fact that they could cut a couple positions with out notice a big difference in anyone person having to pick up alot of extra work. Running for school board def. a option, its been discussed quite a bit lately. Diamond1 have you ever been to a school board meeting? I don't question the board members they put quite a bit of time into the choices they make, however I think that Heidi Carvin runs a very tight meeting, basically to have full control of the meeting, I know there are quite a few issues that the board is not aware of,, because she has done her best to make the problems go away. I am talking from experience here. I have definite questions about the job she has done as administrator. There are things the board should have been made aware of for legal reasons are were not. How do I know they were not made aware of some the issues? I asked on of the gentlemen that is on the board about a particular situation and he had no idea what I was talking about. It was a serious enough of a situation, that he should have known what I was talking about and he did not.
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