West Carroll Board of Education members said they will try to avoid raising the school district property tax rate for as long as possible, though some admitted that a tax hike might become unavoidable at some point in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Discussions regarding the tax rate and rising expenses were held during an October 3 work session immediately before the regular monthly board meeting in the West Carroll Junior-Senior High School cafeteria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board member Kyle Foster started the discussion by apologizing for comments he made during the September work session, during which he suggested that a tax rate increase was needed in order to meet the rising cost of running the school system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sincerely apologetic for putting the cart before the horse,\u201d said Foster. \u201cBut this is definitely something that will need to be talked about in the future.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foster pointed out that desired projects like providing Chromebooks for all students and possibly constructing a vocational facility for the district are going to cost a lot of money, while the district\u2019s fund balance dips a little lower every year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foster added, however, that in the meantime they will keep digging for any way to get additional funding and cut unnecessary spending.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry if I stepped on any toes,\u201d said Foster. \u201cI shouldn\u2019t have gone there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t\u2019 want to raise taxes, and maybe we won\u2019t have to,\u201d said board member Mike Foster, who acknowledged that local farmers would be hit hardest by a property tax increase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Foster commented that state and federal governments are always giving mandates to public schools, but they don\u2019t always offer additional funding to go with those mandates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIf the state says to do it, you have to do it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Board chairman William Robinson pointed out that the district now has a grant writer and they can start looking more closely at some budget items for cost-cutting possibilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI guarantee everything will be exhausted before we get to that,\u201d said Robinson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022 \u2022 \u2022<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the regular meeting:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022The board approved 18 board policy updates on first readings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022The board voted 5-1 not to change the board\u2019s current policy regarding nepotism. Board member Patrick Lindsey voted against this measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022The board authorized the creation of three additional educational assistant positions to be paid for out of IDEA funds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022The board generally agreed to seek additional bids for the resealing of the parking lot at the junior-senior high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u2022The resignation of educational assistant Sally Arnold was accepted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
West Carroll Board of Education members said they will try to avoid raising the school district property tax rate for as long as possible, though some admitted that a tax hike might become unavoidable at some point in the future. Discussions regarding the tax rate and rising expenses were held during an October 3 work…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[248,247,240],"tags":[278,279],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11713"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11713\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsleaderonline.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}