Superintendent Matt Robinson told the board that there was only $96,000 in stimulus money that was given to the school this year as opposed to $214,373 for the year before. Robinson had budgeted a surplus budget for this year, but an expected $89,000 in stimulus money that was supposed to come through for the school for this year did not come through. Robinson was able to save about half of the cuts, meaning that the school will still have a surplus budget for this year. However, since the stimulus money is running out, there will be $212,000 less from the state next year, which will be offset by $150,000 in small schools funding, leaving the school with $62,000 in shortfalls for next year. The year after that, the school will have to come up with as much as $110,000 more in cuts for a total of $172,000 over the next two years assuming the state funds the funding formula at only 80%.
For next year, Robinson proposed the following cuts:
--Absorb a teacher retirement;
--Reduce one aide;
--Eliminate one bus route;
--Reduce supplies and equipment.
For the 2012-2013 school year, Robinson proposed the following additional cuts:
--Combine the elementary and secondary principal positions;
--Reduce even more supplies;
--Reduce a teaching position from full time to part time.
Board member Jeff Andrews inquired about a four day week, which Albany will go to next year. Lathrop has already gone to it. Robinson said that the main upsides would be savings in transportation and food costs. On the downside, Board President Jubal Summers said that the school might have more difficulty attracting bus drivers since it was four days a week instead of five. The way Albany would manage it is that athletic practices and other activities would not start until after 3:00 on the off day. For Albany, the main value of the four day week was more professional development time for teachers; they were able to double professional development time for their teachers. Studies have shown that professional development was just as important as teaching in achieving positive educational results.
Under a four day week, there would be fewer days in session, but school would run from 7:55 to 3:45 every day in Worth County's case. Board member Terry Green said that it would be better to simply have shorter school years and longer school days, but the state does not allow such an option. If schools stick with the five day option, they must have at least 174 days and 1044 hours of instruction. Board member Karen Fletchall said that one of the main downsides to a four day week was that athletic events would mean more time out of class for students.
Robinson said that the cuts he came up with were based on feedback from staff, parents, and the community. Summers noted that the school had already decided that it was not feasible to share superintendents and it would be even more difficult to share a principals' position.
Among cuts Robinson was able to find, the school did not fill a vacancy created right before the beginning of the school year by a late resignation. There was $10,000 in facility money that was not used and the school was able to do a better job of maintaining supplies for a savings of another $10,000.
The board voted to approve the list of cuts as presented subject to revision. Board member Terry Green, who made the motion, said that the changes were not set in stone and that they could be revised depending on the school's outlook.
Kera Galanikis, President of the Worth County PTO, talked about the PTO Fair as well as the group. She said that they had gotten a lot of donations to start up and that their plan was to assist teachers in the face of budget cuts by the school. Meetings are the second Tuesday at 6:00 at the Elementary Activity Room and anyone who comes can vote on where funding should go. They are currently looking into getting resources for teachers. They have taken items down to Albany for recycling and are doing a teacher wish list that ranges from $1 items to redoing the pavement for the playground.
Robinson said that he would be putting out information about the $520,000 bond issue that will be on the ballot in April. Chris Healy wrote a program that would show how much it would cost any taxpayer; for instance, Robinson said that it would cost him $1 per month while it would cost Board Secretary Kandy Sorensen $25 per year. Worth County has the lowest tax levy of any school in the area and would be the second lowest if it were to pass. Passage would require a 4/7 majority. If it fails, then money that would have gone for buying textbooks, technology supplies, and other things will continue to be spent for repaying debts. It will be done at a minimal cost to the school; the board could do a rollback to partially offset the 25 cent increase of the bond issue and the school would get $90,000 in utility money from the state that they are not getting now.
The school is making changes to the Contemporary History requirements at the request of staff, who said that students were only getting a cursory overview of current history. Before, the school taught half a unit of geography and half a unity of Contemporary History, but Robinson said that Geography could easily be incorporated into the rest of the subjects. The new Contemporary American History course would be a whole unit and would start at 1945 and cover events such as the Korean War, for example, in much more depth than it had previously. Robinson said that the curriculum would be based on factual history.
The school also made changes to its math pathways. There would be three different pathways for math; the pathway that students would be placed on would be based on feedback from parents, teachers, administration, MAP results, and grades. It would allow advanced students to take college level work and it would give students who needed it more time to complete their math requirements for graduation.
The school approved a weighted class proposal that Robinson said would reward student achievement for those who successfully completed college preparatory coursework. It would serve as an incentive for students to pursue more rigorous work. The goals would be to increase ACT scores, better prepare students for success in college, more accurately determine class rank, and improve assessment scores. Rigorous upper-level core classes and dual credit classes get weighted with a 1.1 instead of a 1.o effective with the graduating class of 2013 with the ability to retroactively apply weighted classes as needed.
Classes affected include Algebra 2, College Algebra, Elementary Statistics, Trigonometry, Pre-Calculus, American Literature, College Prep English, Distance Learning Speech, Chemistry II, Biology II, Physics, and Business Technology.
The board approved a motion to offer summer school enrichment again this year, contingent on state funding coming through. Should state funding not come through, the school will only offer remedial summer school. Robinson said that the school would not know until May whether or not the funding would be there but that they needed to know the board's decision now so that they could have the buses ready. The school could charge for enrichment, but then they could not give students credit for it.
The board voted to continue the Junior High football coop agreement with Northeast Nodaway.
In personnel issues, the board voted to approve the extra duty pay schedule, offer probationary teacher contracts as presented, hire Dawn Brown as a bus driver contingent on getting her certification, and offered the principals new contracts with the same pay as last year.
Talking to the Sheridan Express afterwards, Robinson addressed a bill in the legislature proposing a revision in the Teacher Tenure Law. It would be scrapped and replaced by a merit pay system in which teachers would be evaluated based on student performance. Pay and length of contracts would be based on that and teachers could be docked pay if they fell to a lower level. However, Robinson said that the biggest problem with the proposed legislation would be how it would translate to fields such as language arts, PE, or special ed.
Robinson said that during the 2012-2013 school year, there could be as many as 100 new school districts becoming designated "hold harmless" by the state. Northeast Nodaway is already designated as such a school; it would mean that such a school would not receive any increases or decreases in state funding. Regarding any possibility of Worth County being designated that, Robinson said he did not see that as happening over the next two years; he said that was designated based on state and local funding and how much that school received in 2005-2006.
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