Northmor to trim budget $200k: no staff cuts for 2012/2013

By RANDA WAGNER –

After a lengthy exec­u­tive ses­sion at Thurs­day night’s reg­u­lar board meet­ing, Supt. Dr. Brent Winand announced cuts at North­mor were being made because of ‘declin­ing dol­lars flow­ing to us from the state.’

That’s the bad news. The good news? No one is los­ing their job this year to bal­ance the books.

“Our cuts will come with­out any­one los­ing a job or being moved from one posi­tion to another,” Winand said, “We’re very for­tu­nate. We will make up our cuts through retire­ments (not being replaced). Some are retir­ing and being replaced with folks that will make a lot less money than what the vet­eran (employ­ees) make. We are going to make our cur­ricu­lum director’s posi­tion part time, with the prin­ci­pals and super­in­ten­dent pick­ing up more of the respon­si­bil­ity, and we will be restruc­tur­ing our admin­is­tra­tive assignments.”

The board is rec­om­mend­ing cuts total­ing about $212,952.00 at this point, but Winand warned there could be more.

“We’ll know a lit­tle bet­ter in the sum­mer when we get our last quar­ter of collections,” he explained. “Our rev­enue is down at the local level in addi­tion to the state level. Income tax col­lec­tion is down, prop­erty tax col­lec­tion is down, and this will mean $600,000 of cuts in the last two years. As an edu­ca­tor, I don’t know how that can con­tinue. It’s a shame that bud­gets are bal­anced at the state level on chil­dren that are try­ing to go to school.”

Winand empha­sized the new build­ing had ‘absolutely noth­ing to do with the cuts being made.’

“In fact this build­ing – maybe thanks to the win­ter we had – is oper­at­ing for much less per square foot in oper­a­tional costs than our other build­ings,” he said. “We knew that would be the case and it was even bet­ter than we expected. If we had the rev­enue we had two years ago, we’d be in great shape. But we don’t. There’s no guar­an­tee it will improve soon.”

The adjust­ments include going from four prin­ci­pals to three, with one assis­tant principal.

“The state has the abil­ity to bal­ance their bud­get by not send­ing money to the local level,” he said. “Local gov­ern­ments and school don’t have that abil­ity. So the only thing schools can do is either cut from their pro­grams and costs or go to the pub­lic and ask for addi­tional dol­lars. Our board has com­mit­ted them­selves to not ask the pub­lic for addi­tional dol­lars. So we have no choice but to make cuts.”

Winand said the board believes they can come up with the dol­lar amount – at this point – to make it one more year.

“After that, we don’t know – we shall see,” he said.

In other busi­ness, the board accepted a bid for replace­ment of bleach­ers from Farn­ham Equip­ment for $153,000.00. Winand reit­er­ated funds for the bleacher work come from the cap­i­tal improve­ment fund – not the gen­eral fund. Funds for the cap­i­tal improve­ment fund came from local monies (no OSFC dol­lars) left over from the school con­struc­tion project when the project was com­pleted under bud­get. Cap­i­tal improve­ment dol­lars can­not be used for any­thing but improve­ments to the phys­i­cal school build­ing and grounds.

The bleach­ers are being replaced due to safety con­cerns, and Winand said Farnham’s bid was the low­est by $21,000.00.

The board agreed to extend a 20-year lease to Wash­ing­ton Town­ship for a dol­lar a year with the con­di­tion if the land ceases to be used for the com­mu­nity, it reverts to the con­trol of the school dis­tricts and the lease will be broken.

“The town­ship would pos­si­bly like to do some improve­ments to the prop­erty they lease, such as upgrade the play­ground, do some work on the ball­fields things like that, but are reluc­tant to do too much with a short term lease,” Winand said.

The board was pre­pared to rec­og­nize stu­dent Kris­tine Pfis­ter for hav­ing her art­work selected as “Top Twenty-Five” in the 2012 Ohio Governor’s Youth Art Exhi­bi­tion, but she was unable to attend teh April 19 meet­ing. She will be rec­og­nized at the May meet­ing instead.

Under principal’s reports, Ele­men­tary Prin­ci­pal Deb Ruhl reported Spring pic­tures were taken the sec­ond week of April. Ohio Achieve­ment Assess­ment tests were sched­uled for April 24, 26 and May 1 for ele­men­tary students.

Kinder­garten screen­ing will be May 2 and 3, and May 8 the junior high and high school bands-will have a con­cert. Pre­ced­ing their con­certs, the 5th and 6th grades are to have a con­cert at 7 p.m.

“Also, I want to say thank you to the board for their lead­er­ship and thank you to the com­mu­nity for their vision in allow­ing this build­ing to be built,” Ruhl said. “This has been an amaz­ing expe­ri­ence to be here and see all the tech­nol­ogy, and see the kids just enjoy­ing it and grow­ing with it. It’s also great the teach­ers are able to work together in one build­ing and pro­vide bet­ter edu­ca­tion for the kids.”

Ruhl also said the PALS pro­gram (FFA pro­gram where older stu­dents would go to Iberia and Johnsville and work with the ele­men­tary stu­dents) had been dropped due to trans­po­ra­tion issues between build­ings. “But Mr. Par­rot and Mrs. Hen­shaw worked together and got that pro­gram going again,” she reported. “A lot of kids are in the program.”

In other busines, the board:

- Appointed board mem­ber Car­lyle Smith as Ath­letic Counsel.

- Accepted a dona­tion of blood pres­sure equip­ment from the Mor­row County Soci­ety for Crip­pled Chil­dren and Adults, Inc.

- Approved the Guar­an­tee Trust Life Insur­ance Com­pany as the Vol­un­tary Stu­dent Acci­dent Insur­ance provider for the 2012–2013 school year.

- Approve Julian and Grube, Inc. to per­form the GAAP (Gen­er­ally Accepted Account­ing Prin­ci­ples) audit for a three year period start­ing fis­cal year 2012, at a rate of $4,100.00 per year.

- Approved the revised North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion Pol­icy JEB, “Manda­tory Kinder­garten” (Early Entrance). This moves the August 1– Sept. 30 dates for early entrance stu­dents to August 1 thru Jan­u­ary 1 and makes Northmor’s pol­icy con­sis­tent with the Ohio Dept. of Edu­ca­tion practice.

- Approved the 2012–2013 Mid-Ohio ESC Con­tract in the amount of $227,917.00.

Under the Superintendent’s Employ­ment Rec­om­men­da­tions, the board approved to:

- Accept the let­ter of retire­ment from Sandy LaL­ib­erte, a 33 year employee, effec­tive May 31, 2012

- Employ Sandy LaL­ib­erte under the North­mor Retire/Rehire Pol­icy for the 2012–2013 school year.

- Approved twenty extended days for Eve Miller, Tech­nol­ogy Coor­di­na­tor, at her per diem rate, for the pur­pose of con­duct­ing main­te­nance on dis­trict tech­nol­ogy dur­ing the months of June, July and August.

- Accepted the let­ter of retire­ment from Ber­nice Wal­ters, Title I Instruc­tor and 20 year employee and from Bon­nie Wise­man, class­room aide and 22-year employee, both effec­tive the end of the 2011–2012 school year; and from Rita Wal­lace, Speech Ther­a­pist, effec­tive May 31, 2012.

- Employ: Jeff Hub­schman to serve as an assis­tant bus mechanic at the rate of $7.70 per hour, not to exceed 160 hours. This posi­tion exists to assist in prepar­ing buses for annual inspec­tion and will be effec­tive May 1, 2012;

Employ begin­ning with the 2012–2013 school year: Chad Red­mon to a 3 year con­tract for the posi­tion of high school prin­ci­pal; Lynn Bev­eridge as a teacher for a 1 year con­tract; Kara Blevins as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Hilary Bunting as a guid­ance coun­selor for a 3 year con­tract; Chris­tine Coe as spe­cial edu­ca­tion coor­di­na­tor for a 3 year con­tract; Kirtina Hile as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Julie Hol­lis as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Emily Irwin as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Cari John­son as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Jody John­son as a teacher for a 1 year con­tract; Lisa Ked­die as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Jack Keg­ley as the After School Pro­gram Coor­di­na­tor for a 1 year con­tract; Mary Koons as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Tim Laird as a teacher for a 1 year con­tract; Ash­ley Lusetti as a teacher for a 1 year con­tract; Patty Par­rott as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Melissa Radel as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Chad Richards as a teacher for a three year con­tract; Kevin Ruhl as a teacher for a con­tin­u­ing con­tract; Michael Skel­ton as a guid­ance coun­selor for a 1 year con­tract; Laura Smith as a teacher for a 1 year con­tract; Kara Sut­ton as a teacher for a con­tin­u­ing con­tract; Amy Tobin as a teacher for a 2 year con­tract; Karly Wat­ter­son as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Chris Wise­man as a teacher for a 3 year con­tract; Vicki Brubaker as a cook for a 1 year con­tract; Dayle Lam­bert as a cook for a 1 year con­tract; Mau­ria Rader as a bus dri­ver for a con­tin­u­ing con­tract; Dean Van­Horn as bus mechanic for a 1 year con­tract; Greg Lib­erti as a cus­to­dian for a con­tin­u­ing con­tract; John Smith as a cus­to­dian for a 2 year con­tract; and Rev. William Sharp to a pres­onal ser­vices con­tract to serve asa tutor for an ele­men­tary stu­dent that speaks Por­tuguese at a rate of $25 per hour, five days per week.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Apr 25 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.