This probably wasn't one of our most interesting meetings, but we did go through quite a few things. Casey was out of town so John conducted the meeting.
One of the main things we went over was the audit report. Mr. Morgan Hatt reported on the audit report. I haven't had time to go over it in detail. But I will go over some highlights. We had budgeted for a $232,357 deficit in our general fund budget. Our deficit ended up being $28,879 or a difference of $203,478, much better than what was budgeted. The non general fund budget revenue from property tax, state, federal and other local taxes exceeded expenditures by $120,747. This money will go into our contingency fund, leaving the balance at the beginning of this school year at $800,000. I think maintaining this amount in our contingency fund is very good considering that our general fund revenue is $646,866 less than it was at this time in 2009. The administrators and everyone else who helps manage our school expenditures have done a very good job. One item I noticed was that our transportation costs dropped $20,000. I asked now that our audit is done, if they can give us better information about how much we saved on the four day schedule. I think they will have that for us next month. A couple more things of interest. Our best average daily attendance over 28 weeks was 696 and we spent $7,083 per student. I think this is about an average amount for our size of school. Idaho is 49th with only Utah lower, in how much the state provides per student. I asked if the schools he audits spends this much per student without an override levy. He said either they have one or as one school did, they took $500,000 out of their plant facility fund to get by for a year. He questioned the legality of what this school did. The state lawyers didn't agree with the school lawyers. He has not done very many audits yet.
Scott Jolley presented the ISAT testing results. The elementary and high school met AYP. There are several segments of how they divide up the kids for testing. The middle school missed AYP for the economically disadvantaged in math by less than one percentage point. If Idaho gets exempted from No Child Left Behind laws like they think they will, this process will change. They will go to what is called the STAR Status program. Basically a scale from 1 to 5. Scott thinks if they go to this it will be easier to make improvements. They have plans now to improve where things are deficient. Some highlights of the test results. In the 3rd grade 96% were advanced or proficient. The middle school met AYP in the two categories they missed last year. The high school continues to reach 100% graduation rate.
We then went over several policy updates. We had gone over most of them at our work session. We needed to change the length of the school day. We talked about the use of electronic devises and other media. The absences allowed was changed from a number to a 90% attendance requirement. We spent quite awhile talking about our board goals. We will go over them more at our next meeting with Casey back. We are setting goals to have more work sessions. Setting a date each year to review the districts overall financial situation. I had suggested that we review our goals more often. I also suggested that we publish a district newsletter maybe quarterly. This could be put on the web site, and maybe have some to give out at the back to school night or parent teacher conferences. If you haven't checked it out the web site looks a lot better. There are more goals and details. If we get them set I will provide more information next month. One thing I don't think we have done very good at is, we should ask patrons, what goals would you like us to have? We need to evaluate ourselves as board members better and ask for suggestions of what things you can see that we as board members or the district need improvement on or goals you would like us to work on. If you have suggestions let me know.
There was a paper given to us by the teachers requesting us to add some things back into policy to define some things for their benefit or protection, since there is no real collective bargaining agreements anymore. We will probably have a work meeting to go over this in detail and will probably need to discuss some of their requests with a lawyer.
We then had public comments. There was a concern about soccer presented, but it was somewhat mitigated because April and I had responded to him and tried to answer his concerns since our last meeting and he thanked us for doing so.
I asked afterwords if anything had come up requesting a discussion about consolidation. I was told no. Maybe my letter to the paper quieted things down about this issue. I do believe trying to be proactive in communication does bring about positive results.
That is all I can think of for this blog. I am off to Chicago Monday for one of my other board meetings. I have a major issue at that meeting I will try to defend and will have to in front of about 100 staff and board members. If you have any questions or comments let me know. Thanks, Brian
