Good news reported on District finances by BW School Board

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 pre­sented the Decem­ber finan­cials, a casual report of dis­trict finances as they stand halfway through the cur­rent fis­cal year, and the district’s most cur­rent Com­pre­hen­sive Annual Finan­cial Report (CAFR).

The good news is, Drum­mey said, at the fis­cal year halfway point Big Walnut’s rev­enue stream is 1 per­cent higher than pro­jected, and expenses are 1 per­cent lower than anticipated.

“To have six months of the fis­cal year under our belt and to have our pro­jec­tions where they are for the year, I’m very pleased,” Drum­mey said. “In December’s report there are a cou­ple of fluc­tu­a­tions. Under Other Income we had planned on receiv­ing $150,000, but the Build Amer­ica Bond Rebate that was due in Decem­ber came in Octo­ber, so it’s just a tim­ing difference.”

Drum­mey said because of the Fis­cal Cliff res­o­lu­tion that received so much media atten­tion dur­ing late 2012, there might be changes in future Build Amer­ica Bond Rebate disbursements.

“We were receiv­ing $110,000 rebates two times each year,” Drum­mey said. “Because of the Fis­cal Cliff and tax pol­icy changes there could be a 7.6 per­cent reduc­tion in the rebate, or about $17,000 annu­ally. We will have to watch this and make an adjust­ment if the tax pol­icy change continues.”

Drum­mey also noted that the CAFR is the result of an admin­is­tra­tive team effort, with dis­trict Direc­tor of Tech­nol­ogy Wayne Thomp­son adding art­work, and Whitney’s Ink doing a rush print and bind­ing job.

“There are three sec­tions to the report,” Drum­mey said. “There’s an intro­duc­tion with an audit report show­ing clean opin­ions, a finan­cial sec­tion and a sta­tis­ti­cal sec­tion. The sta­tis­ti­cal sec­tion shows a 12-year his­tory of the dis­trict, and it’s note­wor­thy that Big Wal­nut Local Schools are the sev­enth largest employer in Delaware County.”

Drum­mey said she hopes mem­bers of the com­mu­nity use the CAFR as an infor­ma­tion resource. She said it’s avail­able on the school dis­trict web­site and a copy will be deliv­ered to Com­mu­nity Library in Sunbury.

Drum­mey said the report does not show school lunch finan­cials, as the school lunch pro­gram is a sep­a­rate and self-supporting oper­a­tion. She did note that Food Ser­vice Direc­tor Cassie Saba­tini, on her own ini­tia­tive, had secured a 6 per­cent rebate for the lunch pro­gram by pur­su­ing healthy food choices for stu­dents. The rebate will save the lunch pro­gram $13,000 annually.

Ear­lier dur­ing the meet­ing Saba­tini was rec­og­nized for start­ing the Fam­ily Hol­i­day Adop­tion Pro­gram. The pro­gram pro­vided hol­i­day assis­tance to 85 Big Wal­nut fam­i­lies last Christ­mas, and 90 fam­i­lies dur­ing the recent hol­i­day season.

Assis­tant super­in­ten­dent Gary Bar­ber gave an FTE update, show­ing the num­ber of employ­ees serv­ing the dis­trict on a monthly basis. Bar­ber said he clus­tered every­thing under one umbrella that he calls Barber’s World that includes employ­ees on the Big Wal­nut pay­roll and employ­ees paid by the Edu­ca­tional Ser­vice Cen­ter of Cen­tral Ohio, a.k.a. ESC.

Barber’s pre­sen­ta­tion showed that the school dis­trict cur­rently has 331.83 employ­ees. There are 17 admin­is­tra­tor posi­tions, includ­ing six prin­ci­pals and ESC paid posi­tions, seven admin­is­tra­tive sup­port posi­tions, and 10.5 ESC related posi­tions like occu­pa­tional and speech therapists.

A total of 178.5 teach­ers serve the school dis­trict, and there are 15.5 ESC paid tutors.

Under clas­si­fied aides and sec­re­taries the dis­trict has 25 teach­ing assis­tants, 17.5 sec­re­taries, 2.25 office aides, 17.33 food ser­vice posi­tions, 25 bus dri­vers, 2 mechan­ics, 17 cus­to­dial posi­tions and 3 main­te­nance positions.

Bar­ber said he would update the report monthly so board mem­bers could track staffing lev­els; board pres­i­dent Alli­son Fagan said she would also like a monthly stu­dent pop­u­la­tion report to track how stu­dent pop­u­la­tion growth impacts staff increases.

In other busi­ness, board mem­bers approved the Carlisle, Patchen and Mur­phy, LLC Ser­vices Agreement.

• Board mem­bers approved amend­ing Item N (Edu­ca­tional Train­ing Reim­burse­ment) in the Admin­is­tra­tive Fringe

• Ben­e­fits, effec­tive the 2012–13 school year.

• Board mem­bers approved the revised High School Sec­re­tary II (Gen­eral Sec­re­tary) job descrip­tion; and approved a 90-day pro­ba­tion­ary clas­si­fied 220-day con­tract for the 2012–13 school year to Laura Roberto, Big Wal­nut High School Sec­re­tary II (Gen­eral Sec­re­tary), step 0, effec­tive Jan­u­ary 7, 2013.

• Board mem­bers approved a 90-day pro­ba­tion­ary clas­si­fied 190–day con­tract for the 2012–13 school year to Linda Klam­foth, Big Wal­nut Inter­me­di­ate School, Office Assis­tant (.5), step 0, effec­tive Jan­u­ary 10, 2013.

• Board mem­bers approved the non­re­newal of Cather­ine Bellows-VanHouse, 2-hour food ser­vice worker, Gen­eral Rose­crans Ele­men­tary, effec­tive Jan­u­ary 23, 2013.

• Board mem­bers approved the fol­low­ing dona­tions: $62.52 donated to Big Wal­nut Mid­dle School Pos­i­tive Behav­ior in Stu­dent pro­gram, donated by Mor­gan Stan­ley c/o Cyber­grants, Inc.; and $62.52 donated to Hylen Soud­ers Ele­men­tary, donated by Mor­gan Stan­ley c/o Cyber­grants, Inc.

• Board mem­bers will hold a Spe­cial Work Ses­sion at 8 a.m., Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 2, in the Big Wal­nut Inter­me­di­ate School, Con­fer­ence Room.

The next reg­u­larly sched­uled Big Wal­nut Local School Dis­trict Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing will be held at 6:30 p.m., Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 11, in the Big Wal­nut High School Media cen­ter, a.k.a. Library.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.