Manhattan/Ogden USD 383 School Board members wrapped up budget concerns during Wednesday’s meeting as the board finalized the 2015/2016 school board budget for publication.
Cuts to the budget, and ultimately teaching contracts, were blamed on statewide education budget cuts. This movement concerned some teachers and the stability of their programs. During this meeting Family and Consumer Sciences teacher, Karen Klein stepped forward to tell board members of her department’s difficulty keeping up with the number of students wanting to take FACS courses. She claimed the Manhattan High School’s FACS staff will deal with a major hit to their program this year.
“We try to have valuable programs and increase our enrollment,” Klein said, “We had nearly 100 students who pre-enrolled over what we had this past year. We were elated, absolutely elated. And then, we had a teacher retire. Out of this, the two (teachers) remaining tried to figure out how to work with this. She not only was a specialized teacher in our area, she was on an overload. This past year we had 32 sections. This coming year, we will have 20…. (This reduction) is not only going to impact our 9th graders heavily, it will also impact our culinary arts program heavily.”
Superintendent Bob Shannon and other board members felt unprepared to vote on the 2015-2016 maximum budget this year, however passed the final budget after an agreement that in this case, sooner was better than later.
Other items discussed during this board meeting included the bid for the Lee Elementary storm drainage system, employee insurance and revised business over the board policy GAAF for emergency safety services by Deb Howser, Director of Special Education.
The next regular meeting occurs on August 5th, and will cover more budget development as well as board committee assignments.
