School District under budget; except for supplies

By LENNY C. LEPOLA

News Assis­tant Man­ag­ing Editor

Dur­ing Mon­day evening’s Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing, dis­trict trea­surer Feli­cia Drum­mey said the district’s Novem­ber rev­enue was $661,000; expenses were $2.4 million.

“This is typ­i­cal of our rev­enue cycle,” Drum­mey said. “We were able to cover our expenses with the cash bal­ance on hand.”

Fol­low­ing voter approval of a five-year, 7.5-mil emer­gency oper­at­ing levy in Novem­ber of 2010, the dis­trict has built a cash sup­ply for lean months. Dis­trict rev­enue is uneven because real estate tax dis­burse­ments are made only two times each year, income tax quar­terly, and state rev­enue for schools on a guar­an­tee, like Big Wal­nut, has been shrinking.

Drum­mey said the dis­trict received $127,000 from the Build Amer­ica Bonds inter­est rate rebate in Novem­ber that was not expected until December.

“All cat­e­gories are under bud­get except sup­plies, which was over bud­get for Novem­ber by $13,000,” Drum­mey said. “Year to date sup­plies are only $3,000 over bud­get. Over­all we are under bud­get in each oper­at­ing department.”

Finance Com­mit­tee mem­ber Susan Hatcher gave a Tax Dupli­cate Mon­i­tor­ing presentation.

Hatcher explained that school dis­tricts have many con­trols over spend­ing, but few ways to gen­er­ate rev­enue; but it’s pos­si­ble to find tax rev­enues due that for a vari­ety of rea­sons are not end­ing up in dis­trict coffers.

“When resources are scarce in the dis­trict you have a finan­cial respon­si­bil­ity to con­trol the bud­get,” Hatcher said. “You need pro­fes­sional assis­tance on the rev­enue side; you want to assure the com­mu­nity you get the taxes com­ing to you.”

Hatcher said com­mit­tee mem­bers reviewed pro­pos­als from four firms for pro­vid­ing tax dupli­cate mon­i­tor­ing ser­vices to the district.

“We asked our­selves: What were we look­ing for?” Hatcher said. “Respon­sive­ness, a his­tory of pos­i­tive results, how they spread good­will for the dis­trict, and are they cost-effective?”

While the district’s Finance Com­mit­tee is, in Hatcher’s words, only a sound­ing board, after their review they rec­om­mended enter­ing a Tax Dupli­cate Mon­i­tor­ing legal ser­vices’ agree­ment with Carlisle, Patchen and Mur­phy, LLC.

Later dur­ing the meet­ing board mem­bers tabled a motion to approve the Carlisle, Patchen and Mur­phy, LLC Legal Ser­vices Agreement.

Big Wal­nut High School teach­ers Angie Stooks­bury and Stacy O’Reilly gave a pre­sen­ta­tion about inte­grat­ing fic­tion and non­fic­tion in high school Eng­lish classes, and across the curriculum.

Using a Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion titled: Lit­er­a­ture is Life & Life is Non­fic­tion, Stooks­bury and O’Reilly talked about how newer core lit­er­a­ture cur­ricu­lums are required to inte­grate fic­tion and non­fic­tion — 30 per­cent fic­tion and 70 per­cent nonfiction.

“How do you inte­grate fic­tion and non­fic­tion with­out spend­ing a lot of dol­lars to do it?” Stooks­bury asked. “When we part­ner fic­tion and non­fic­tion we have to ask our­selves: What do we want for our stu­dents? We want stu­dents to dis­cover what they can pull out of it? They have to ask them­selves: How can I make this work for me?”

Stooks­bury said teach­ers should encour­age their stu­dents to become, in her words, excel­lent manipulators.

“We want stu­dents to be informed, to be involved, to take a side,” O’Reilly explained. “Stu­dents should ask: How do we become involved with infor­ma­tion, and manip­u­late this infor­ma­tion to take a stand?”

Stooks­bury said the goal that she and O’Reilly are work­ing towards is to cre­ate crit­i­cal thinkers who ana­lyze and syn­the­size mul­ti­ple per­spec­tives from a vari­ety of gen­res to estab­lish edu­cated opinions.

“The goal is stu­dent own­er­ship, dynamic pre­sen­ters, with a mul­ti­me­dia focus,” Stooks­bury said.

Board mem­bers approved the Gal­lagher Ben­e­fit Ser­vices Con­sult­ing Agreement.

Board mem­bers approved the facil­i­ta­tion and train­ing ser­vices as out­lined in the “State­ment of

Work” between the Edu­ca­tional Ser­vice Cen­ter of Cen­tral Ohio and the Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict for adop­tion of the Ohio Treasurer’s Eval­u­a­tion Sys­tem, for the period of Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 through June 2013 and not to exceed $4,000 plus mileage.

Board mem­bers approved a Bal­ance of the Year Clas­si­fied Con­tract for Angela Sny­der, Office

Assis­tant, Hylen Soud­ers Ele­men­tary (90-day con­tract complete).

Board mem­bers approved Aaron Ren­ner as a Wrestling volunteer.

Board mem­bers approved the fol­low­ing dona­tion: $750 donated to Big Wal­nut High School Renais­sance Pro­gram, donated from Big Wal­nut Edu­ca­tion Foundation.

Board mem­bers will hold their 2013 Orga­ni­za­tional Board Meet­ing at 6 p.m., Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 14, 2013, in the Big Wal­nut Mid­dle School Library.

The next reg­u­larly sched­uled Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing will be held at 7 p.m., Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 14, 2013, in the Big Wal­nut Mid­dle School Library.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.