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| Finance Committee Hears Revisions to Proposed Budget Cuts |
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| Written by Janet Murphy |
| Friday, 26 February 2010 14:30 |
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At the Chilton School Board Finance Committee meeting held February 17th, Superintendent Dr. Claire Martin and Business Manager Lisa Lau discussed revised budget recommendations, formed in consideration of public input at the previous Finance Committee listening session meeting, with committee co-chairs Larry Hedrich and Jerry Kolbe. Revisions to Martin’s budget reductions, originally presented at the January Board meeting, include keeping freshman sports, but creating an athletic/co-curricular fee of $35/year for high school participants, as well as collecting baseball/softball admission fees. Reductions in Board equipment, the retirement of an English teacher, and removal of swim practice transportation costs created additional savings in the budget. Martin said that in addition to moving a portion of the District’s utility costs to Fund 80, the $10,000 cost of the District Newsletter would be transferred to Fund 80 as well, since it is mailed to every home in the community. Martin said that the calendar that is mailed out contains annual notices that the District is required by law make available to the public, and which used to be published in the newspaper. The District will also be able to transfer more than $30,000 of 7th and 8th grade athletic costs to Fund 80, provided that the sports are open to all students in the community, including those that are home-schooled or attend private school. Lau added that there are still many variables, including retirements and open enrollment numbers, which could change before the final version of the budget is presented to the Board in July. Regarding moving the Dance/Pom team to “club” status per Athletic Director Dave Sonnabend’s recommendation, Lau said that Dance was listed as ‘co-curricular’ in the handbook, but was classified with athletics because it tends to run during the athletic season. Hedrich said that the Co-Curricular Committee needs to decide how to classify Dance because if it is grouped with athletics, then it would need to meet the 10-participant minimum to run. Hedrick and Kolbe agreed that the District should continue to pay the dance coach for one more year, to give the team time to find alternative financial support, much as the swim team has. Hedrich also said that he would like to know all of the ramifications of changing Dance to club status before making a final decision. Martin also sought to clear up statements made at the previous Finance Committee meeting that the Chilton School District has the highest paid administrative costs/high school student compared with other districts in the conference. Martin said that the Department of Public Instruction figures used to calculate these costs included high school-only districts, in other words, districts that don’t include middle and elementary schools. For a more fair comparison with these districts, Martin said, “I’m a superintendent of K-12, so minimally, if you wanted to try and figure this out, you would take a third of my salary, a third of Lisa’s salary, a third of Becky’s salary and all of Tim’s salary and then you might find out high school administrative costs.” Hedrich added that according to the DPI web site, Wrightstown does not indicate having a middle school principal or business manager, even though they do, which leads to their administrative costs appearing much lower than Chilton’s. Citing administration/operations costs of $2,188 per student for the 2008-09 school year, compared with $2,145 for the 2003-04 school year, Martin said, “Giving consideration for inflation, the Board has reigned in administrative costs.” 
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