The 2017 WGSD Annual Meeting will be held on Monday, October 23rd, 2017 at 6:00 PM in the Evergreen Elementary Multi-Media Area. This is the only public meeting scheduled for Monday night. To view the agenda go to this WGSD Board Docs link, or scroll to the bottom of this post.
Who can attend? Who runs it? What do we vote on?
Anyone who is eligible to vote in WGSD school board elections is eligible to vote at the WGSD Annual Meeting. After introductions by Dawn Bleimehl, WGSD School Board President, the electors (those eligible to vote) will select a person from the community to “chair” the remaining portions of the meeting. Once a meeting chair has been selected, the electors will review the meeting minutes from the previous year.
The main event at the annual meeting comes next, where we will view a budget presentation and a General Presentation of Tax Related Issues from Ed Brzinski, WGSD Superintendent. After the presentation, residents will be able to ask questions about the school budget. Typical action items are as follows:
- Approve the school budget and adopt the school district tax levy
- Establish the salaries of school board members
- New Business
- Set the date for the next annual meeting
Some Budget Highlights
- WGSD School Board Committee of the Whole recommends NO Increase in School Tax Levy for 2017-18: At the October 2017 Committee of the Whole meeting Ed Brzinski, WGSD District Administrator, shared four proposed budget options for 2017-18. The committee recommended, based on current information, a budget option that has NO increase in the school tax levy. This will likely be the fourth straight year for the Waterford Graded School District with either a tax levy freeze or slight decrease.
- State Aid Decrease: With the decrease in enrollment experienced during the 2016-17 school year, this year’s state aid decreased by almost $600,000. While WGSD continues to add students at the lower grades each year, the graduating 8th grade class was larger than the incoming kindergarten class. The $600,000 loss is a large amount, but it would have been much worse had the WGSD not started the district wide 4K program two years ago. The 4K program and its 82 students from 2016-17 school year has again added just over $700,000 to WGSD’s state aid award, yet the cost to run the program is around $400,000. In simpler terms the $600,000 budgetary hole caused by this year’s state aid decrease could have been much worse ($900,000).
- Health Insurance Renewal: This year the health insurance renewal originally came in at 4.0%. After requests were made to see the data on how much money the insurance company had paid out, it was realized that the loss ratio for the previous months was too low to support an increase in the premium. As a result, the insurance company was informed the renewal was unacceptable. After discussions with the insurance company the renewal was reduced to 0%. This is the second year in a row for a freeze in the health insurance premium. However, due to additional staff receiving health benefits, and several moving from a single to a family plan, there was again an increase in the overall cost of health insurance benefits.
- School Lunch: The school lunch program did not experience a loss as it did the previous two years when WGSD did not participate in the NSLP.
- Special Education Services: This year there was a sharp increase in the cost of special education services.
Posted by Matt Kranich on 10/23/2017
WGSD Parent and School Board Member
References:
2017 Annual Meeting Agenda
2017-18 Budget Process Presentation by Administration at October 9th Committee Meeting