It’s not a bad problem to have, in fact while many school districts are struggling to balance their budget; the Sedalia School District 200 ended the 2016-17 school year with a budget surplus.
In addition, the Board of Education was presented with a preliminary balanced budget for the upcoming school year at Monday night’s meeting.
The district ended the fiscal year with revenues of $52, 244, 679. 23 and expenditures of $51, 677, 187.67 or surplus of $567, 491. 56, according to information provided in the board packet.
According to Dr. Harriett Wolfe, chief financial officer for the district a number of those funds will be used for payment of items on the district’s maintenance plan.
“As a district we have managed our resources in our capital funds well,” Wolfe said. “One item we may bring to the board for future consideration is a climate controlled storage facility for district use.”
Wolfe explained that the district is currently using the old cafeteria space at Smith-Cotton Junior High for storage but that area is now being converted into classroom space.
“It might be more economical in the future to rent or even for us to build a climate controlled storage space for the district in the future,” Wolfe suggested.
Superintendent of Sedalia 200 Schools Brad Pollitt who spoke to the Democrat prior to Monday’s meeting suggested a number of reasons for the budget surplus.
“We continue to see an increase in enrollment and because of that the portion of the basic formula we receive increased funding,” Pollitt explained. “The Prop C sales tax also came in higher than we had projected,”
Pollitt also gave credit to district administrators who continue to do a good job of staying within their budgets and to CFO Wolfe for her ability to oversee both expenditures and in obtaining all appropriate revenues for the district.
Wolfe presented the board a preliminary balanced budget request of $51,736, 250 for the 2017-18 fiscal year.
The board was given a report by Pat Sturgis, RN, and health coordinator for the district detailing the district’s health care services.
Sturgiss commented that district health service providers saw a total of 61,702 health visits last year, of those 1,795 visits resulted in a student being sent home.
“We are continuing to look at ways to improve our data collection of students,” Sturgiss commented. “We are also seeing an increase in mental health conditions in some of our students as well as an increase in chronic health conditions district wide.”
Mental health concerns were also addressed by Assistant Superintendent Dr. Nancy Scott in her report on at risk students.
An at risk student is defined as one who is, “school aged that are at risk of academic failure due to one or more life experiences or academic challenges.”
The district provided service to 1, 876 students classified as at risk from early childhood through high school last year.
Scott provided a number of strengths of the program in the board packet including the consistency through the use of identification tools as well as a number of increased services and supports provided district wide.
The biggest challenge the district needs to address from an at-risk standpoint is the metal health aspect that is increasing in some students district wide Scott told the board.
In the only item for discussion listed on Monday’s agenda, board members considered changes to the disciple code handbook.
Due to an increased number of office referrals for violent tendencies at early ages, the district wants to address the consistency in the levels of discipline for these occurrences, especially as they are being conducted by students at younger ages.
“I really want to thank the committee for the tremendous amount of work they did on this handbook,” Triplett said. “We spent a lot of time and read the policies word for word.”
“In the past the policies emphasized junior and senior high school students but because of increased inappropriate behavior by students at younger and younger ages the committee felt the need to address the consequences to those younger students,” he added. “Our intent is not to expel more students or suspend them from school but we need to address the behaviors we are beginning to see especially in younger students.”
Triplett added that the district has a number of strategies and interventions in place to help students who may violate any district policy at any age.
“We are seeing an increase by younger students of disrespect and inappropriate conduct toward teachers, paraprofessionals and staff members,” Triplett commented. “As administrators we also need to crack down on the misconduct by a handful of students who continue to be chronic violators of district policies.”
The board is expected to take a vote on the handbook recommendations at a future meeting.
Board members also voted to accept the recommendations of the following individuals for induction into the 2017-18 Hall of Fame Class.
Individuals to be inducted into the Athletic Hall of Fame include: Bill and Alma Dey for their contributions to the baseball program at Smith-Cotton and the Sedalia community and Jennifer Drum-McCaflin and Bruce Kerr, both who were stand-out track and field athletes.
Those selected for the Activities Hall of Fame are two musicians: Dr. Maurice (Gene) Kelley II and David Turner.
Pollitt commented that the district continues to struggle to receive nominations for both the Activity and Academic Halls of Fame.
“Once again we had a great group of candidates to choose from,” Pollitt said prior to the meeting. “But we need more nominations especially to the Activity and Athletic Halls. For the second consecutive year, we received no nominations for the Academic Hall.
“We know there are a number of highly qualified individuals who should be considered for selection,” he added. “We just need to have them nominated.”
Board members were presented the quarterly building reports from each school.
Overall the district completed the year with an attendance rate of 90.57 percent.
Attendance is a matter the district will continue to address for the future.
In other actions the board voted to
• Accept the the low bid from Graves Menu Maker Foods of Jefferson City for bread and bakery supplies for the district.
• Accepted the sole bid from Hiland Dairy Foods of Warrensburg dairy products.
• Accepted the bids from SGC Foodservice from Springfield bid and from Ecolab of Delware on three products that had significant differences in price for the district’s ware washing contract.
• Accepted the lowest qualified bid from midwest Computech of Sedalia in the amount of $564 per desktop computer purchased. The district expects to replace 500 computers for the upcoming school year. District computers are on a six year rotation schedule.
The board recognized and thanked the Robert A. Treuner Masonry Company on behalf of Smith-Cotton High School for work on the installation of the pedestal for the bust of General George R. Smith, located at Smith-Cotton Junior High. The bust was a gift presented to the school on behalf of the Senior Class of 2017.
Members also thanked the Women’s Service League for their donation totaling $5,500 to Whittier High School. The money will be used to complete the new library at Whittier.
