CPA Carl Nordquist of the accounting firm of Althoff and Nordquist presented the ISD 166 school board with the results of the audit they completed for the year ending June 30, 2011. He recommended that the district keep a close eye on the budget, saying schools can go quickly from having a healthy fund balance to being in statutory operating debt (SOD).
What happens if you go into statutory operating debt? school board member Leonard Sobanja asked. A school in SOB must get out of it, Nordquist answered. The state tells you where to make cuts and requires you to make them within a certain timeframe, he said, and if a large expenditure such as a new boiler is needed, the school would be in a difficult position.
“SOD is really not a good deal to get into,” Nordquist said, adding that being in SOD gets “ugly” – people lose their jobs.
Nordquist also advised the board to be careful not to plan on getting money the state anticipates sending.
Nordquist commended Business Manager Cindy Carpenter for the excellent job she does handling the district’s finances. A lot more is required of this position than would have been required 20 years ago, he said. Having computers has created an expectation that districts keep track of everything.
Nordquist pointed out that the fund balance includes more than cash. It includes non-spendable things like food service inventory and fuel oil. While expenditures have been reduced each year since 2008, he said, revenue and the fund balance have decreased as well.
Employee contract
The board discussed a motion to ratify a contract with Local Union 346, the “general drivers, warehousemen, helpers, and inside employees.” It involves nine employees in the transportation, custodial, and food service departments. The one-year contract did not grant all the union’s requests but did promise a raise of 35 cents an hour, a total budget increase of about $6,800.
With the auditor recommending care in maintaining the budget, board member Sobanja said, he didn’t know why they should approve the raises. This group has been on a pay freeze for four years, Superintendent Beth Schwarz answered.
School board member Deb White agreed that they need to be careful with even small increases in the budget but suggested that future administrative cuts could offset this increase. “At some point you’ve got to say thank you somehow,” she said.
“At some point in time,” Schwarz said, “people have to have increases.”
The board approved the contract unanimously.
Community Center Steering Committee
The board discussed whether it needs to have both Superintendent Schwarz and school board member Jeanne Anderson on the Community Center Steering Committee. Because the site will not involve the west wing of the school complex but will involve school ball fields, Maintenance Director Mike Groth will attend in place of Superintendent Schwarz.
The committee has no meeting schedule right now because the project is on hold pending word on the City of Grand Marais’ involvement in financing the project.
Deputies on campus
School board member Jeanne Anderson, who sits on a discipline task force, reported that Sheriff Mark Falk offered to have deputies walk through the campus occasionally. She said the task force supported this.
Four-day week discussed again
At a November 14 work session, the board discussed the fact that it approved keeping far less money in reserve—the equivalent of about 23½ days of operating expenses—than the previous board, which had voted to keep 40 days in reserve.
School board member Terry Collins recommended that any cuts come from operations, maintenance, transportation, or administration rather than eliminating teacher or paraprofessional positions.
School board member Leonard Sobanja wondered why they need so many paras when they used to get along without them. Most paras are working with special ed kids who have been largely mainstreamed into regular classrooms, Superintendent Schwarz said. Declining enrollment will require some faculty reductions, however. Next year, for example, they will need only one fifth grade teacher because they’ll have only 20-some fifth graders.
The board discussed the possibility of saving money by going to a four-day week, something that was hotly debated a couple of years ago. School board member Deb White said she thinks coming to school five days a week is important for the students, especially because so many of them live in remote locations.
“The school is the heart of the community,” White said, even though some may argue that it’s the lake, the tourists, or things like North House Folk School. “There’s nothing more important in our county than our school kids,” she said. She did not think taking students out of school an extra day would be a good thing. “I don’t think we’re desperate enough yet that we would need to do that,” she said. A four-day week might be working fine for Lake County, she said, but Cook County is not the same.
The district could actually lose money rather than gain money by going to a four-day week, Collins said, if the decision alienated enough voters to make future referendums fail. Superintendent Schwarz said she didn’t think new information would change the minds of those who had been against the notion of a four-day week previously.
Jeanne Anderson said she thought people were against a four-day week because they were told it was about gaining an educational advantage and not about the money. She said she didn’t think people were convinced four days would be better academically than five days, especially when schools in some developed countries are in session six days a week.
Superintendent Schwarz said she thought people were mostly concerned about what to do with their kids on the fifth day. This issue has been quickly resolved in communities that have adopted a fourday week, she said, because daycare centers that took kids over the summer were able to take them the extra day during the school year. The difference in the number of school days in a year would only be about 20 days, she said.
Vocational school field trips
More than 35 students took a field trip to Lake Superior College and Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College on November 9. The trip was part of new curricula in the Career and Tech Education Department that includes business technology, family and consumer science, and industrial technology. Students not attending the trip completed a research project related to vocational training. A second trip is planned for the spring.
The field trips are being funded through U.S. Department of Education Perkins Act funding that supports vocational/technical education.
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