School Board Sets M&O Levy Amount

WAITSBURG - The Waitsburg School Board spent a good portion of their December 11 meeting attempting to establish a dollar amount to seek for the upcoming schools maintenance and operations levy. The levy request will be put in front of voters in February.

The board unanimously agreed to ask for $532,000 in 2015 and $548,000 in 2016. The 2015 amount trans- lates to $4.08 per $1,000 of assessed property value, at 2013 assessed rates, which could change and lower that amount slightly. The 2016 amount translates to $4.20 per thousand.

Residents are currently paying $3.34 per thousand for the M&O levy approved in 2012. That is slightly lower than the 2012 projected amount of $3.41, due to an increase in assessed property value that year.

The school district held a meeting in November seeking community input regarding both maintenance and operations needs and necessary upcoming capital expenditures. Nearly all the attendees at that meeting were on the District staff.

In a second attempt for feedback, the District created an online survey, asking residents to rate the importance of a list of maintenance and operations items. Those items included: maintaining the cur- rent classified staff, pur- chasing new instructional materials to align with Common Core standards, ex- tracurricular activities and transportation, technology (including computer upgrades necessary for testing), equipment and facilities maintenance (including a new phone system), and staff professional development. The survey options also included the addition of an elementary school teacher so that there would be a teacher for each grade rather than the current grade 4-6 combine, and an option for providing a new, no-cost preschool.

Fifty-nine people responded to the survey, ranking each item on a five level scale ranging from "strongly support" to "strongly against". (See chart) Estimated costs of each item were not included in the survey. Dis- trict Superintendent Carol Clarke said she wanted to know how important item were to the respondents without the dollar amounts factoring in.

Clarke estimates the costs as follows: Maintain Classified Staff ($150,000), Instructional Materials ($37,500), Extracurricular Activities and Transporta- tion ($180,000), Technol- ogy ($100,000), Maintenance of Facilities and Equipment ($50,000), Staff Professional Development ($15,000), Addition of Ele- mentary Teacher ($85,000), District Provided Preschool ($25,000).

The survey also asked taxpayers to vote for the level of financial support they were willing to offer the schools in the upcoming levy. Fourteen respon- dents indicated they would support the current level of $3.35 per $1,000 of assessed value, six indicated they would support as high as $3.50 per $1,000, 13 indicated they would sup- port $4.00 per $1,000 and 11 indicated they would support as high as $5.00 per $1,000. (At $5.00 the cost of all items on the survey would be covered.) Eleven indicated they were not taxpayers in the Waitsburg School District.

Board members dis- cussed the fact that only three items take the amount necessary to fund all the items above the current levy amount: technology, district preschool and the addition of an elementary teacher. The board felt that, with the new computerized testing requirements, tech- nology was non-negotiable and must be included. The requested levy amount is a total of all the items except the addition of an elemen- tary school teacher and the district preschool.

The Board is hopeful that levy equalization funds - state funds provided to areas with lower property assessments -- will be made available and allow the pos- sible addition of an elementary teacher. However, re- ceipt of those funds is not a given, according to Clarke.