The North Wasco County School Board voted to accept the resignation of Zone 5 Director Brian Stevens at the June 15 meeting.
“As many of you know, [Stevens] pursued and has been extended the boys basketball coaching position at TDHS, so he is looking to resign,” Board Chair Jose Aparicio said to the board at the regular meeting. “So as board policy BBC states, we do have to declare the vacancy on this zone.”
According to Board Policy BBE: Vacancies on the Board, vacancies are filled by board appointment, and if a vacancy were to occur in a zone, the school board must advertise for an eligible resident from the same zone for at least a 20-day period. In the interest of timing, as many people travel during the summer, Aparicio suggested extending the application period for a later date. “It’d be a little rushed, in my opinion, to try and get someone or get all the applications and then trying to interview and appoint someone for our July meeting, so recommending that we just have a longer application period and then we look to bring in applicants in our August meeting and then look to appoint someone at that time.”
According to Aparicio, due to the timing of the vacancy, the person appointed would serve a two year term and be up for election in 2025.
With a motion made by Director Judy Richardson that was seconded by Director David Jones, the board unanimously approved to accept Steven’s resignation. His resignation follows two months after the resignation of Zone 2 Director Dawn Rasmussen.
In other news, the board approved the proposed tax budget of $60,679,131, with a permanent tax rate levy of $5.2399 dollars for the 2023-2024 school year and fiscal year of 2024. The budget was reviewed and approved by a budget committee over the span of two different hearings for board action. According to a superintendent’s message included in the budget write up, revenue projections in the budget indicate a 4.8% increase in general fund revenue compared to the 2022-23 budget.
“This budget is built on an assumption of a State School Fund (SSF) of $10.1 billion. The current proposal in the governor’s budget sits at $9.9 billion. This translates to approximately $635,000 built into the budget,” said the superintendent’s message.
According to the message, should the $9.9 billion SSF go through, a large portion of the district’s Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) III federal funds will be expended to roll forward its current service level, as well as provide for additional staffing that is currently outlined in the budget. “To be clear, this is not a sustainable practice,” said the message. “The use of federal dollars is a ‘one time’ fix. This means the second year of the biennium will be impacted as we will no longer have those funds to draw upon. We are hopeful that legislators will be responsive to advocacy efforts still going on at this time and will increase the state school fund while time allows. Otherwise, like other districts, we anticipate making reductions in the second year of the biennium.”
During the June 15 meeting, District 21 Chief Financial Officer Kara Flath noted that major changes to the budget included a change to fund structure, with the district tracking the Student Investment Account and the High School Success funds separately from other state grants.
“It’s just easier for reporting on [Oregon Department of Education] ODE’s end,” said Flath. “So we have pulled those out of the 220 fund and separated them into a 251 and 252 fund.”
A similar change was made to the nutrition fund, which, according to Flath, was considered a 250 fund, and was changed to a 299 fund. “The goal of that is to, again, align with ODE’s fund structure,” said Flath, who noted that ODE has nutrition services budgeted as a 299 fund and state programs as 250. “We can’t overlap those in the same year, so next year we’ll finish out the last few changes for ODE and then we’re lined up with how they would like to see that budget.”
With a motion made by Director John Nelson, seconded by Jones, the board unanimously approved the adoption of the budget for the 2023-24 school year.
The entire June 15 school board meeting is available for viewing on the District 21 Media channel on YouTube.
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