Northmor financial position stable this fiscal year

By Randa Wagner –

Octo­ber is the month new five-year fore­casts are due to be turned into the state for all Ohio schools, pro­vid­ing a overview of cur­rent finances and a glimpse of what the future may hold.

North­mor Trea­surer Tina Gabler pre­sented the Board of Edu­ca­tion with the fore­cast for the dis­trict at the Octo­ber 18 reg­u­lar board meet­ing. She noted the ‘bot­tom line’ for 2012 didn’t end that well, and it was nec­es­sary to take an advance from the county auditor’s office on the real estate taxes.

“Money was bor­rowed from this fis­cal year for last fis­cal year, so we could close out the year,” Gabler explained. “How­ever, we had one extra pay period last fis­cal year, and this fis­cal year we will have one less. The upswing of the fore­cast this year is, I believe the econ­omy in our area of Mor­row County is slowly improv­ing, because I see an increase in our income tax.”

Gabler said there was an increase in income tax in 2012 over 2011 and she projects at least a one per­cent increase over last year for this year.

“We have half our receipts in for this fis­cal year in income tax and, so far, over last year’s actu­als, we’ve received $68,000 more this year. That’s promis­ing,” Gabler said. “That’s good news for our community.”

She also reit­er­ated that employ­ees (district-wide) are still on a pay freeze and noted there have been increases in insur­ance costs but noth­ing out­side of the cur­rent trend. Decem­ber is the halfway point for the fis­cal year and will pro­vide a clearer pic­ture of where things stand, but Gabler said she feels like things are on track and con­fi­dent with the forecast.

“The elec­tions will play a huge part in what we receive from the state, and five years out (in the fore­cast) is a roll of the dice,” Gabler said. “But this fis­cal year, I feel pretty good about it.”

“The state gen­eral fund is also much health­ier,” Super­in­ten­dent Dr. Brent Winand remarked. “Their rev­enue is up sig­nif­i­cantly and we can only hope, in that case, some of the fund­ing that was lost from the state to schools and other local gov­ern­ments will be rein­stated. I think that’s a rea­son­able expectation.”

“Our fore­cast doesn’t look this way because of the state,” Gabler responded. “It’s because of our local com­mu­nity. It’s all hap­pen­ing at our local level. This isn’t because of an increase from state dollars.”

In other busi­ness, High School Prin­ci­pal Chad Red­mon said the state released pre­lim­i­nary report cards Oct. 17 and said the high school has met 11 of the 12 indi­ca­tors but will miss the grad­u­a­tion rate require­ment, (cal­cu­lated from the pre­vi­ous year’s num­ber of graduates).

“From my obser­va­tions, it doesn’t look like any­one in the county met the state’s new grad­u­a­tion rate require­ment,” Red­mon noted. “The way they’re track­ing that now is a bit different.”

Red­man also com­mented on Ohio’s new Teacher Eval­u­a­tion Sys­tems, say­ing the state has, “rolled out the new tool we’re going to be required to use across the state.”

“We’re going to put it in the hands of our peo­ple telling them next year, this is what we’re going to have to sub­ject you to,” he told the board, “and we will con­tinue to work with peo­ple on what that looks like and what we’re going to do to help them with that process.”

Red­man also said the high school is doing some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent for National Honor Soci­ety this year. There will be both a fall and spring induc­tion. The fall induc­tion of 7 new mem­bers will take place Tues­day at 7 pm in the high school.

North­mor had an assem­bly Octo­ber 10 for Sports World and 3-Time Olympic Gold Medal­ist Leah Amico (soft­ball) attended. She gave a speech about mak­ing pos­i­tive choices in life, meet­ing with stu­dents and pos­ing for pho­tographs. North­mor was one of eleven schools on the tour.

New busi­ness

All bus routes for this school year were approved; an out-of-state trip for three JOGS stu­dents to attend the National Jobs for Amer­ica Stu­dent Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, DC was approved; a con­tract for Sonja Hof­fer to trans­port a spe­cial needs stu­dent was approved; and a con­tract with Randy Miller as part time Cur­ricu­lum Direc­tor was approved. Miller retired after 14 years as Cur­ricu­lum Direc­tor and will fill the posi­tion until a new direc­tor is assigned in January.

Employ­ment

The board approved the fol­low­ing emply­ment rec­om­men­da­tions for the 2012–2013 school year: John Don­ner for the posi­tion of Junior Var­sity Boys’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Mark Wise­man for the posi­tion of Fresh­man Boys’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Ben Pletcher for the posi­tion of Assis­tant Boys’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Ken Par­rott for the posi­tion of 7th Grade Boys Bas­ket­ball Coach; Drew Sick­miller for the posi­tion of 8th Grade Boys’ Bas­ket­ball Coach; Kay Clouse, Lau­ren Rausch, Cari John­son, and Hilary Bunting as teach­ers in the After School Assis­tance Pro­gram funded through the 21st Cen­tury Grant; Michele John­son and Sarah Tram­mell as sub­sti­tute cus­to­di­ans; Brenda Tay­lor as a sub­sti­tute cafe­te­ria worker; Mon­ica Swank for the posi­tion of sub­sti­tute sec­re­tary and aide; Nicole Sears for the posi­tion of sub­sti­tute sec­re­tary and aide; and Jeff Hub­schman for the posi­tion of sub­sti­tute sub­ur­ban driver.

The next reg­u­lar North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing will be held Novem­ber 15 at 7:30 p.m. in the North­mor Board of Edu­ca­tion meet­ing room.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Oct 24 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.