Cardington Schools to place .75 mill levy on Spring ballot

By Eve­lyn Long –

The Cardington-Lincoln Board of Edu­ca­tion has agreed to place a five year .75% earned income tax levy on the May 7, 2013 bal­lot for con­sid­er­a­tion by dis­trict vot­ers. The unan­i­mous deci­sion was made dur­ing the board’s meet­ing on Jan­u­ary 14 fol­low­ing a brief discussion.

Board mem­ber Chuck Jones said he felt the earned income tax was the fairer tax — a com­ment agreed to by board mem­bers Jim Clinger and Pat Clark. Supt Brian Petrie said the ben­e­fit of the earned income tax levy is that retire­ment ben­e­fits, rental income and invest­ment income are not taxed. There is not a great dif­fer­ence in the amount that would be gen­er­ated from either the prop­erty or earned income tax levy, he said.

Petrie explained that the state requires the board give approval of a plan of reduc­tion because of the pro­jected deficit of $631,812 for FY14 as out­lined in the five year fore– cast last Fall. It must have a dol­lar amount and num­ber of reduc­tions that are there.

The super­in­ten­dent laid out the pro­jected plan of reduc­tion for the dis­trict as follows:

1 — The tem­po­rary clos­ing of the Inter­me­di­ate school with the redis­tri­b­u­tion of the stu­dents to the ele­men­tary and the high school/junior high school build­ings result– ting in a reduc­tion of $75,000 in util­i­ties; and a reduc­tion of 6.5 clas­si­fied posi­tions within that build­ing, a sav­ings of $205,000 — unem­ploy­ment claims and expenses are included

2 — Con­vert sin­gle route school bus trans­porta­tion to dou­ble rout­ing reduc­ing by six the dri­vers, sav­ing $130,000 in salaries and ben­e­fits– he added back in $40,000 in expenses for the tran­si­tion — the cost of extra miles, fuel and main­te­nance and increase in salary for exist­ing dri­vers, a net sav­ings of $90,000

3 — Build­ing sup­plies– a reduc­tion of $10,000.

4 — A reduc­tion of extended ser­vice days for selected cer­ti­fied staff– $28,000 in savings.

5 — Tech­nol­ogy bud­get reduc­tion — $25,000 put in for tech­nol­ogy or pur­chase of hard­ware been pulled from the budget.

6 — Elim­i­na­tion of a bus pur­chase in FY 2014, a sav­ings of $85,000.

7 — Four cer­ti­fied staff reduc­tions, a sav­ings of $251,000 — again this includes pos­si­ble unem­ploy­ment claims.

This cre­ates a sav­ings of $769,000 leav­ing a sur­plus of $137,188. “We have to be in a posi­tion where we cre­ate a cush­ion. That would put us in a sur­plus and end the year between $350,000 and $400,000 — get­ting us through FY 2014 and 2015 with no extra money com­ing in.” noted Petrie.

This plan of reduc­tions will be voted on by the board dur­ing the spe­cial meet­ing to be held on Jan­u­ary 28 fol­low­ing a pub­lic meeting.

Petrie explained that even though ths plan will be sent to the state, the actual for­mal action in sus­pend­ing or action taken is made by the board — Jan­u­ary approval of plan, Feb­ru­ary, approval of spe­cific posi­tions and March, sus­pen­sion of con­tracts for the fol­low­ing year.

In other mat­ters, Supt Petrie said that the dis­trict had received its first pay­ment of casino money, $23,000. He under­stands there will be two pay­ments a year, with another pay­ment com­ing before the end of the school year.

Fol­low­ing a dis­cus­sion, board mem­bers agreed to estab­lish a $10,000 schol­ar­ship for the Mar­garet Miller Memo­r­ial schol­ar­ship for 2013. This stipend will be awarded a grad­u­ate in incre­ments of $2500 a year for the recipient’s four years of post high school edu­ca­tion. The Mar­garet Miller Memo­r­ial Schol­ar­ship, in excess of $630,000 has been estab­lished for the award­ing of schol­ar­ships to Cardington-Lincoln High School grad­u­ates. The board will decide each year the amount of the schol­ar­ship to be awarded.

Supt Petrie also reviewed the School Safety Plans that he and the admin­is­tra­tive staff had worked on.

The board approved pay­ment of Decem­ber bills total­ing $1,436,012.71 on war­rant checks 80568–80713.

Supt Petrie rec­og­nized the CArd­ing­ton Math Com­pe­ti­tion Team who had made a “strong show­ing” dur­ing the recent Mar­ion Area Math Com­pe­ti­tion held recently.

High school Prin­ci­pal Joe Mills named Logan Huey, who received a $750 schol­ar­ship to OSU Mar­ion, fin­ish­ing third out of all fresh­men; Jane Perry, who fin­ished 6th out of all sopho­mores; Zach Lee, who fin­ished fourth among all sopho­mores; Lau­ren John­son, who fin­ished eighth among all juniors; Tre Plow­man, who fin­ished fifth among seniors and Anne McEl­wee who fin­ished fourth among all seniors.

Under Per­son­nel: the board approved the cre­ation of cafe­te­ria inven­tory clerk posi­tions: K-6 Inven­tory clerk at five hours per week and 7–12 Inven­tory clerk at 5 hours per week.

Also approved were the fol­low­ing tutors effec­tive Jan­u­ary 15-May 1, 2013 — all up to four hours per week: Katie Scohy, Diane Tucker, Cindy Huvler, Kathy Gard­ner, Kim Har­vey, Angie Kasper, Nicole Kreuger, Lisa Picou, Marty Bar­nett and Dionne Law­son. The board approved the elim­i­na­tion of Bus Route 13– a cur­rently vacated position.

Also approved were the fol­low­ing over night trips — FFA Neil Swonger, Jan­u­ary 19–2 Colum­bus; FFA Neil Swonger, March 13–17-2013, Florida Trip; FFA Neil Swonger, May 2–3, 2013, Colum­bus, state con­ven­tion and Span­ish Club, Jen­nifer Weikle, March 30-April 7, 2013, Costa Rica.

The board approved the addi­tion of a 9th spe­cial edu­ca­tion stu­dent in the Mid-Ohio ESC morn­ing preschool edu­ca­tion class and waiver request to ODE in order to meet spe­cific needs of the spe­cific students.

Monty Maceyko’s appoint­ment to the Cardington-Lincoln Librar y Board was approved Under the Con­sent agenda, the fol­low­ing were employed: Yvonne Eastep, head cook high school, effec­tive Jan­u­ary 2, 2013; Theresa Pick­ett, assis­tant cook, 3.5 hours per day; and Lisa Lev­er­ing, EMIS coor­di­na­tor, effec­tive Feb­ru­ary 1, 2013. Edna Noble was employed as a sub­sti­tute aide.

Sup­ple­men­tal con­tracts were awarded to Ben Thiel, var­sity boys track; Cor­rie Moore, var­sity girls track; Kirby Fran­cis, junior high girls track; John Nay­lor, junior high boys track; Brian Peak, junior var­sity soft­ball; Tracy Williamson, spring musi­cal direc­tor and Tom Din­u­oscio, pep band.

Giv­ing their reports were Scott Hard­wick and Mar­sha Lev­er­ing, prin­ci­pal and assis­tant prin­ci­pal, respec­tively of Grades K-6. They reviewed Cur­ricu­lum Day, Movie Night and O A test­ing com­ing in the spring. They are work­ing towards the win­ter bench­mark process and noted the bas­ket­ball court at the ele­men­tary school needs upgrading.

Joe Mills, Grades 7–12 prin­ci­pal, said job shad­ow­ing had taken place and high school stu­dents are tak­ing their exams.

John Brehm, ath­letic direc­tor, noted a $42,245 work­ing gate bal­ance from ath­letic games. He cred­ited the coaches and cus­to­di­ans for doing a “tremen­dous” job for the games. He also noted a Twit­ter account has been established.

Dur­ing the board’s reor­ga­ni­za­tion meet­ing prior to its reg­u­lar meet­ing, Jim Clinger was named pres­i­dent; Tim Brake, vice pres­i­dent; Pat Clark, leg­isla­tive liai­son; Chuck Jones, stu­dent liai­son and Tim Brake, rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Cardington-Lincoln Ath­letic Board.

The board estab­lished their meet­ings to be at 7 pm in the high school library on the sec­ond Mon­day of the month.

The Farm­ers Cit­i­zens Bank is des­ig­nated as the offi­cial depos­i­tory of all school funds and the Mor­row County Sen­tinel as the offi­cial pub­lisher of all Board of Edu­ca­tion required legal notices.

This meet­ing, which began at 7:50 pm, adjourned at 9:05 pm and the board entered exec­u­tive ses­sion based on Ohio Revised Code 121.22 (G) 1,2,3,4,5 and 6. They adjourned that ses­sion at 9:41 pm and recon­vened into reg­u­lar ses­sion and adjourned with no fur­ther action.

The board will meet in spe­cial ses­sion on Jan­u­ary 28 in the high school library fol­low­ing a pub­lic meet­ing in the Pat Drouhard audi­to­rium. The next reg­u­lar meet­ing will be held Feb­ru­ary 11, 2013 at 7 pm in the high school library.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.