State still behind on school funding

Though the Vandalia Community School District will probably not have to dip into its working cash reserves to make it through the current fiscal year, Superintendent Rich Well said Tuesday that the district is “still dramatically behind in categorical payments from the state.”

In his report to the school board, Well said that the state now owes the district $379,927.

The breakdown of the monies owed by the state is as follows: special education, $213,632; lunch and breakfast program, $5,983; transportation, $123,100; ADA block grant, $6,827; reading improvement block grant, $27,755; and driver’s education, $4,630.

“So far, we’re holding steady with what we have in our fund balances, but we’re looking at expenditures really hard,” Well said.

He did note that the OKAW Area Vocational Center did recently receive a payment from the state for $210,000 for a vocational grant. To date, halfway through the current fiscal year, the state has paid four of the six payments that have come due for vocational programs.

Also, a pre-kindergarten grant of $50,000 has been received, but those funds will be divided between the Vandalia, Ramsey, Brownstown and St. Elmo school districts.

In his monthly financial report to the board, Well noted that the balance in the four operating accounts (education, building, transportation and working cash) now totals just over $4 million. Last year at this time, the balance was $3.6 million, he said.

At the midway point in the fiscal year, expenditures in the education fund are at 49 percent of the total budget. The building fund is at 47 percent, and the transportation fund is at 38 percent. No monies have been spent out of the working cash fund.

In other action, the school board approved the appointment of Kevin Jackson as athletic director for both the high school and the junior high school for the 2010-2011 school year. He will replace Mike Butler at the high school (who is retiring at the end of this year) and Gerry Reuss at the junior high school (who is near retirement after serving as athletic director there for several years).

In that new position, Jackson will continue to teach driver’s education for about 40 percent of his day, with the remainder being used for the AD duties. He will remain the varsity basketball coach, but will no longer serve as an assistant football coach, Well said.

Before coming to Vandalia in the fall of 2006, Jackson served as basketball coach and athletic director for grades 6-12 at St. Elmo.

“We feel that this will be a good change, because it will give us a central figure to oversee all of our athletic activities and scheduling for the district,” Well said. “A lot of school districts have consolidated the AD position to cover both the high school and the junior high school.

“We’ll head down that road and evaluate it. We don’t want to overwork one person to do both.”

The AD job compensation is spelled out in the district’s contract. It pays a $6,000 stipend (18 percent of the base pay), Well said.

During the reports by building principals, Rod Grimsley announced that the junior high has received a $2,500 technology grant from Exxon/Mobil, thanks to the efforts of John Nestleroad, manager of the company’s Patoka facility.

Also, Vandalia Elementary School Principal Stacy South said that third-grade teachers organized a pen pal project with residents of Brookstone Estates during the fall semester. Just before Christmas, the participating students paid a visit to their pen pals.

Darrell Fesser, director of the OKAW Area Vocational Center, reported that the auto body class is continuing to work on restoring a 1928 fire truck for the Vandalia Volunteer Fire Department.

The board took the following action:

• Approved the first reading of the district policy updates.

• Approved the district’s employee seniority list.

• Approved Dave Bell as a volunteer assistant track coach.

• Approved Andy Whitten as assistant baseball coach.

• Approved Brenden Wasmuth as volunteer assistant baseball coach.

• Approved the Shelbyville CPA firm of Mose, Yockey, Brown & Kull to do the district’s annual audit. The price for the audit was set at $7,850, with an additional $2,850 for Yellow Book requirements.

The audit was formerly done by the Vandalia firm of Luallen, Cearlock, Barth & Burnam, but that company no longer will be doing school audits, Well said.

• Approved a resolution to dismiss an educational support person for cause.

• Approved May 22 at 7 p.m. for the Vandalia Community High School graduation ceremony.

• Approved the 2010-11 school calendar. That calendar basically mirrors the current year schedule, Well said.

The school year starts on Thursday, Aug. 19, with a teacher institute day, with the first day of classes on Friday, Aug. 20.

The last day of classes for the first semester is Tuesday, Dec. 21. Classes resume on Tuesday, Jan. 4. Spring break runs from Thursday, Apr. 21 through Monday, Apr. 25.

The final day of classes is determined by the number of emergency days used for inclement weather.

An executive session of nearly 90 minutes was held to discuss a personnel issue. The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 p.m.

School board members Jay Carroll and Jay Smith were absent from the meeting.