Cardington-Lincoln school board will seek levy on spring ballot

By EVELYN LONG -

The district’s finan­cial sit­u­a­tion dom­i­nated the agenda when the Cardington-Lincoln Board of Edu­ca­tion met in reg­u­lar ses­sion on Decem­ber 10.

Supt Brian Petrie reviewed fig­ures show­ing a deficit sit­u­a­tion loom­ing in FY 2014 if there isn’t an increase in rev­enue. Sim­ply put, Petrie said, “We are not bring­ing in enough funds from both state and local sources to sus­tain our staffing levels.

Despite mak­ing dras­tic reduc­tions in staff in 2009 and 2011 that have accounted for a ten per­cent reduc­tion in staff costs, we will again need to make cuts. Since I began as a prin­ci­pal in this dis­trict in 2007 we have been forced to cut 16 teach­ing posi­tions and we have 12 fewer non-teaching posi­tions. The next round of cuts are unfor­tu­nately inevitable. At this point, the suc­cess of a future levy will dic­tate whether or not we will be forced to cut again in 2014. Our over­all spend­ing has decreased in five con­sec­u­tive years and no mat­ter what hap­pens on the bal­lot, next year will be the sixth.”

The board agreed to meet the auditor’s dead­line of Jan­u­ary 1 to cer­tify the plac­ing of a 5 year .75% earned income tax levy or a 6.5 mill emer­gency oper­at­ing levy on the May bal­lot. The board will make a deci­sion at a later meeting.

The board approved pay­ment of Novem­ber bills total­ing $1,160,142.20 on war­rant checks 82110–82266 as sub­mit­ted by dis­trict trea­surer Scott Osborne.

The board accepted an addi­tional dona­tion of $5,000 to the Beat­rice Kloss Scholar-ship. The orig­i­nal dona­tion was $10,000.

Also accepted was the dona­tion of a refrig­er­a­tor to the Fam­ily and Con­sumer Sci­ence Pro­gram from the Whirlpool Corporation.

A dona­tion of $100 for facil­i­ties use was accepted from the Card­ing­ton Youth Bas­ket­ball organization.

Supt. Petrie told board mem­bers that an invest­ment account with Edward Jones Finan­cial of Mar­ion has been cre­ated for the pur­pose of accept­ing secu­ri­ties from the estate of Mar­garet Miller. At this time those secu­ri­ties amount to $600,000 and are cre­ated for the pur­pose of award­ing schol­ar­ships to Card­ing­ton grad­u­at­ing seniors.

The retire­ment of Ele­men­tary School head cook Terri Lin­st­edt, effect Jan­u­ary 1, 2013 was accepted. Also approved was esti­mated sev­er­ance pay for Lin­st­edt in the amount of $4406.72.

Approved for the award­ing of grant funded stipends (High Schools that Work) in the amount of $500 each were Joe Mills, Jodi Link­ous, Gin­ger Hol­loway, John Brehm, Pam Lyons and Donna Kill.

Under the con­sent agenda, the fol­low­ing employ­ments were approved: Garry Stevens, bus route 16, 3.9 hours per day effec­tive Novem­ber 19, 2012; Clas­si­fied sub­sti­tutes: Wes­ley Pierce, cus­to­dian and Lawrence Ship­ley, bus dri­ver. Sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts were approved for Tim Edgell, Var­sity bowl­ing; Kristi Alexan­der, Art Club and Shan­non Byerly, Improv Club.

Supt Petrie reported on the results of the third grade read­ing achieve­ment assess­ment which was given in Octo­ber and then again in April. He said that 87% of our third graders scored pro­fi­cient or higher mean­ing that they are on tar­get for read­ing. The State require­ment for the third grade read­ing indi­ca­tor is that at least 75% of the stu­dents score pro­fi­cient or higher by April. This is a great sign that our stu­dents are extremely well pre­pared com­ing into third grade. This will allow the teach­ers to bet­ter focus on the 13% that still need some inter­ven­tion and it will also pro­mote pro­vid­ing higher lev­els of instruc­tion for those stu­dents who are above grade level.

The board will hold a work ses­sion on Jan­u­ary 28. The orga­ni­za­tional meet­ing of the board will be held Jan­u­ary 12, 2013 at 7 pm in the high school library. Named pres­i­dent Pro-tem was Jim Clinger.

Com­ments were made by Jim Clinger, the board’s rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Tri-Rivers who said there are two new pro­grams there this year, a Vet Tech and a Grand Tech Robi­otic pro­gram, with new build­ings being con­structed for them.

Board pres­i­dent Chuck Jones said that he had learned the state fire mar­shal had made its annual visit to the dis­trict and found zero defi­cien­cies. “It takes a lot of work to assure that we have no issues — hats off to Carl Hard­wick, Jr and the staff to make sure all sys­tems are oper­at­ing safely.

The board adjourned reg­u­lar ses­sion at 8:30 pm to enter exec­u­tive ses­sion based on Ohio Revised Code 121.22 (G) 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And 6. The board adjourned exec­u­tive ses­sion at 9:38 pm with no fur­ther action taken.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Dec 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.