West Carroll: No Easy Answers for Busing Issue, Plus One Percent Sales Tax: Round Two?

By Michael Miller For The Prairie Advocate News

THOMSON – Two issues highlighted the Wednesday, September 21 West Carroll School Board meeting; the continuing debate over how to solve the problem of the loss of the Thomson shuttle and the ensuing problems that caused, and the recently defeated one percent sales tax proposal for the county resurfaced as a potential means of revenue for the District.

The meeting was attended by Board members Beverly Kilpatrick, Tim Atherton, John Brigham, Dawn Rath and Jerry Anderson, as well as Board president Mike Highland, with Mark Klein absent. Also attending were District Superintendent Craig Mathers, High School Principal Bob Lamb, Assistant High School Principal and Athletic Director Clint Cowman, Preschool and Special Education Principal Pam Delp, Primary and Intermediate School Principal Jeannette Ashby, Middle School Principal Julie Katzenberger, Transportation Director Karl Popkins, Recording Secretary/Business Office Manager Sandra Aude and Brad Field from the Technology Department.

A very brief public hearing on the 2011-2012 budget preceded the regular meeting, with Mathers delivering the news that the District was once again operating at a deficit, this time of 1.2 million dollars once all state funds were factored in. With no questions forthcoming, the hearing was closed within a matter of minutes.

The busing issue kicked off almost immediately during Public Comments, with several of the dozen or so parents in attendance expressing continued frustration with the current set up. One audience member said that the current way was not working and that she’d contacted her state representative, adding that she was close to paying the $8,000.00 required to school her child in another district. She cited the inordinate amount of time her child was on the bus each morning as the reason that her child had cried for two hours the previous night. “I respect all of you, I hope you respect us,” she said.

Another parent with one child going to Mt. Carroll and another in Savanna warned of what could be a dangerous situation with so many kids and parents on the roads in the morning. She also wondered if the kids would be excused if the parents deemed that the roads were impassable during bad winter weather. Ms. Kim LaShelle of Thomson asked if there were city buses currently running, and wondered why the Thomson shuttle was taken away in the first place. Mathers answered that this was a “cost saving measure” and was part of an $800,000.00 cutback for the district last March, with the District electing to let the shuttle go in lieu of taking more teachers out of the classroom.

Administrative Reports

Administrative reports were largely brief, with Lamb reporting that around 45 to 50 students had expressed interest in the Certificate of Employability program. Ashby said that a total of 512 students were enrolled in the Primary School this year, and that the AIMSweb testing was complete with all grade level teams meeting and developing plans for the Tier II and III students. The principal also reported that the Primary and Intermediate Schools had received checks from Target as part of the Take Charge of Education program, which allows Target Card users to allocate 1 percent of their charge to the school of their choice; the Primary School received $369.39 and the Intermediate School received $255.19.

Delp noted that there are currently 237 students enrolled in the Special Education program, and that the District is continuing to make strides in getting kids back into the mainstream classrooms. Delp said that the District has yet to locate and hire a speech therapist and that the search for one is ongoing; parents have the right to use an outside provider for this service for the amount of time documented on the IEP and the district will reimburse them them cost. Twenty eight students currently require this help.

In her Preschool report, Delp told the Board that the Preschool has now received 100 percent of last year’s money for the Preschool for All and the Prevention Initiative Grants. Delp said that all 3 district classrooms are full with 20 students apiece, and that there is currently a waiting list for all 3 as well; Chadwick/Milledgeville 7, Eastland 13, and West Carroll 12.

Katzenberger reported that 74 percent of the middle school students and their families attended the Meet the Teacher and Coach Night in August, an eleven percent increase over the previous year’s attendance. She also announced that Elkay Manufacturing donated $500.00 to the school’s math enrichment classes for the use of ALEKS (Assessment and Learning in Knowledge Spaces) program, and thanked the company.

Field reported a very busy month in the Technology Department, with a huge amount of work orders and the replacement of 25 computers in the High School and Primary School. He also reported issues in the labs due to the advanced age of some computers.

Mathers updated the Board on the formation of a consolidation committee which will study the feasibility and advisability of reorganizing state school districts. This ties in with a state proposal to potentially reduce the number of Illinois school districts from 898 to 300 at some point.

The Superintendent also reported on the contents of a letter received from the Scales Mound School District, regarding the apparent impending departure of the Stockton School District from the Area Vocational Center and that action’s impact on the other districts that participate in the center. During discussion, Highland advocated drafting a similar letter and looking at the cost difference for West Carroll to possibly go to the Whiteside vocational center, given the increased costs that West Carroll could be burdened with due to the Stockton departure.

Transportation

The issue of transportation was the main Old Business agenda item. Highland reviewed the discussions the Board had had regarding potential changes that might address the concerns of the parents who were upset by the current setup. He said that they had looked at changing the start time of school from 8:00 to 8:30, but that this would adversely affect the sports activities and regardless, this change couldn’t be made this year, perhaps next year.

Another potential remedy might be to have some students walk to school as opposed to being picked up by the buses. In order to do this, Highland said that the District would have to deal with IDOT in order to control any potentially hazardous routes that might be involved. This would affect kids within a mile radius of school but the kids beyond that point would still need to be bused. State approval would be necessary for this move, and again, this would only be a possible change for next year, not this.

Highland said that Popkins was also looking at rearranging the start and stop times to make the trips more efficient and had already instituted some later times.

Using spare buses to pick up the work slack isn’t presently an option, either, as the district currently has three spares but three main buses are down. Highland said that he has contacted the bus companies about this and some progress has been made, but with a deficit budget there are presently no finances to support the purchase of additional buses for shuttle use.

Highland struck a contrite tone when he said that this was “not what he wanted to communicate” to everyone, and that in retrospect, “we probably didn’t plan correctly.” The president said that the Board “looked at ways to save money for the District as a whole . . . I apologize as a member (of the Board). He said that the Board had the best intentions for the district in their actions, and that if the state legislature would override the governor’s veto, that would free up additional funding for transportation, the Board could revisit additional purchase at that time, but right now it wasn’t possible.

Kilpatrick said that her main concern was for the younger kids, and asked whether or not the district could run a single bus to the Primary School. This idea seemed to meet with approval from most of the assembled parents. Popkins said that the cost for such a measure “would be extreme” in his opinion. A lengthy discussion ensued about various alternatives, with almost all necessitating the purchases of additional buses, to which Atherton said “the money just isn’t there.” One audience member mentioned that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Syndrome was a potential hazard of keeping kids on the bus for so long, and another asked if so many sporting events were really necessary. Rath asked if a bus from Savanna to Thomson was possible.

Ultimately, after long discussion, Highland instructed Popkins to meet with Mrs. Christina Appel and Mrs. Teri Houzenga to identify which parents would be willing to run their children into Thomson and which wouldn’t, starting with the Primary School, and arrange the busing routes and times to more efficiently facilitate these changes.

Mathers noted that he’d like the public to know that field trips are in place for the current school year and “have nothing to do with what’s up in Transportation.”

A full New Business slate included Mathers’ request that the Board allow the district to go out for bids for Workman’s Compensation Insurance for the District.

One Percent Sales Tax, Round Two?

Mathers brought up the issue of investigating a proposal for a one percent sales tax which would impose retailers and service occupation taxes to be used exclusively for school facility purposes, this time “taking the county board out of the equation” and making it a “home rule” tax at one half percent, insuring that revenue generated would stay within the district. Atherton said he thought this was a “good thing,” particularly in light of the transportation funding issue. Anderson wondered, because of the proposal’s decisive defeat in April, what has changed in the interim to change the tide of public disapproval. Kilpatrick said she thought it was “a great idea but tax is a dirty word currently,” adding that she thought the Board should only pursue it if those against it could be turned. Highland, always a proponent of the measure, said that such a move could reduce the local property tax rate and was still in favor. Mathers said if it was pursued, a committee would be needed to do fact finding and public information, as the last time “we put out the facts” but that there were “some flat out lies” disseminated by some of the opposition regarding the proposal. The superintendent said that the revenue from such a tax could be used to repair buildings and parking lots, as well as facilitating a property tax reduction. The cost of roof repair for all four schools, he said, would equal about $417,000.00, and if the district had to utilize state money to finance this, the tax rate for community members would necessarily go up. This tax could potentially provide $500,000.00 a year at one percent, Mathers said.

The Board decided to put this on the October agenda as an action item.

Four pieces of district equipment went up for sale, two snow plows and two salt spreaders, and two field trips, one to the Illinois High School Theatre Festival, and one to Cleveland and Sandusky, Ohio for the annual High School Music Trip in 2012. All were approved.

The Board went into Executive Session at about 8:30 pm, to discuss employee, collective bargaining and student discipline cases.