School Board Meeting 3/25/14 Notes: As always I am posting my notes from tonight school board meeting. And as always I want to point out that these are simply my notes and take on tonights meeting. They are in no way official. Part 1: Budget Presentations: Athletics and Facilities Athletics - Gary DeRenzo scribd/doc/214561931/Athletic-budget-presentation The Athletic Budget is listed at $123,200 for the 2013-14 school calendar year. This is virtual a no increase in budget and is still just over 10% LESS then 2011 when the budget was at its highest. As you can see in the slide presentation the budget has been very consistant over the last 10 years. An encouraging number displayed was the fact that about 32% of the entire student body (Grades 7 - 12) participate in the Athletics program (23 sports available). That is fantastic. I truly believe athletics plays a very important role in developing a well rounded prospering student body. As you can see on the slides, Mr DeRenzo has done an excellent job in keeping his budget as low as possible while still providing a fantastic and safe athletic program for our students. A few questions that were asked: Justin had asked about why we use Blackwood Golf Course instead of a closer course. The answer was two fold: One, Blackwood has a training area for the students (chipping and driving area). This allows the student to practice parts of their game without having to play on the course. Two, Blackwood has been very courteous about school schedule. Many courses wouldnt allow the students to partake in using the golf course as needed like Blackwood. Dee asked about if the new HS gym could be rented out more to possible bring in revenue to the school. Answer: The belief is yes. With an up to date gym and facility that the High School project will bring, the ability to rent out will be available. That will take some agressive action of the board, but it is believed to be something that the school will be able to accomplish. If you build it they will come was the termed used. Facilities Budget - Michael Katzenmoyer scribd/doc/214565600/Facilities-budget-presentation The facilities budget is a much larger piece of the overall budget. The prospective 2013-14 school calendar year budget is requested at $1,142,500. This is a .03% DECREASE from last year. Mr Katzenmoyer wanted to make sure everyone saw that he had a decrease and thus the .03%. I agree. If you have found a way to decrease your budget with how much expenses are increasing you should make sure everyone knows. This budget covers 38 employees and all maintenance, custodial, grounds, operations and capital projects for our five buildings. In the slides provided, you will see that some areas have increased. Maintenance increased by 10% from last year to a total of $335,450 Custodial increased by 20% from last year to a total of $144,350 Grounds increased by 12% from last year to a total of $79,900 However, even with these increases the overall budget has decreased due to the largest part of the budget Operations. Operations has seen a nice size decrease, especially in electricity expense. A decrease of 8.2% overall. This is the largest piece in the Operating budget and is prospected to be at $672,000 for 2013-14 year. All areas of operations has either seen a decrease or zero increase to allow for the overall budget to be lower that last year. As you can see both presentation have been provided with excellent material and both departments show how they are managing their departments at its fullest. Job well done. Questions asked: Kelly asked about how much are we using MCIU (Montgomery County Intermediate Unit). Answer: We use them for many, but not all supplies and equipment purchases. The reason sometimes not used for supplies goes to sometimes quality of product is cheaper then going with best price. The example used: Trash bags purchased through MCIU have a tendency to be of lessor quality and thus you end up using more bags (double plying) then you would by purchasing a higher quality material. It was stated that the MCIU is used anytime available to decrease price for supplies and equipment (among other areas that are currently used). Dave asked about snow removal. Answer: We currently do our own snow removal on the elementary schools, however, we dont have the equipment to remove the snow from the HS or MS. A contract company does those two schools. They are VERY happy with how well a job the company has done this year and look to have the contract approved after this year for the same company to continue. The cost has been considerably higher then anticipated. This is expected with the winter we have had. However, it still looks like overall the facilities will stay in budget for the entire year. Thumbs up on a job well done again. Rick asked about the increases shown in the other smaller areas of grounds, custodial and maintenance. Not that he doesnt like seeing the budget being lower, but would like to see all departments show numbers of why areas have increases when the budget is going to be increased by more then 5%. Answer: Some of the areas were discussed, and Mr Katzenmoyer would get more concrete numbers to show why the increase is needed for the other aspects of the budget. Next part will be cover Shellie Feolas comment on the situation of bullying, public comment, new business and the LEED grant.
Posted on: Wed, 26 Mar 2014 02:51:32 +0000
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