Overwhelmed with more pressing concerns in recent meetings the business services committee has put off the usual consideration of the routine budget items that we normally work through each month. As a result much of next Wednedays meeting will be spent catching up with a long list of department budgets:
IX. Discussion and Possible Approval of the Following Budgets for 2009-2010
A. 535 – Superintendent’s Office
B. 537 – Business Office
C. Funds 38 & 39 – Debt Service
D. 539 – Transportation (Funds 10 & 27) – John VanderMerwe
E. 540 – Buildings & Grounds – Mark Scullion
Including District Utilities and Capital Maintenance Budgets
F. 541 – Technology – Bill Herman
G. 878 – Jump Start
H. 879 – Summer School
I. 880 – Pupil Services Budgets (Funds 10-& 27)
J. 881 – Early Learning Fair
K. 883 – Special Education Department Tuition Budgets (Funds 10 & 27)
L. 884 – Excel
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(photo ©2008 Bruce Fritz)
About Me
- Peter Sobol
- My family moved to Monona in 2003 and have been happily ensconsed in the Frost Woods Neighborhood ever since. I have 2 kids who graduated from Mg. I have been serving on the school board since April of 2007. We moved back to the Midwest in 2002 after spending 10 years in California, where I was a Department Director for Maxtor, a Fortune 500 company. In truth we left California largely because of the school situation - chronically underfunded schools did not offer the kind of programs or opportunities we wanted for our children. We picked Monona because our thorough research showed that this was a place we would really like to educate our kids. Our experience has taught us to value the quality schools we have here in Monona, and the importance of careful stewardship to maintain community support for those schools.
5 comments:
Early learning Fair should be cut entirely. We already offer free 4K to everyone. No need to see the kids before that. When they are 4 we can decide who needs extra help etc in kindergarten. The amount of teachers, etc at that thing is astounding, and they all have subs back in their regular classrooms. Not necessary.
Summer School and Jump Start are ridiculously inexpensive. For those kids who are simply taking it as enrichment, the fees could be higher and could be reduced for those who get free/reduced lunch. For those folks who can afford it, they should pay way more for those classes-
I think there are way too many aides and teacher assistants in our schools. We need to look at that, and have teachers do recess duty, etc. It is much better for the kids to have their teachers out there and much better for the consistency of the rules, etc....
Peter can confirm, but pretty sure State law doesn't allow the district to charge for summer school instruction. It can charge for consumables, like supplies and such, but public schools cannot charge what essentially amounts to tuition in order to pay for staff, even in the summer. If districts could do this, I suspect there would be many who would run summer programs as a revenue source, including Monona Grove.
Agreed on Learning Fair in this budget environment unless the district can find sponsorship funds outside the regular budget. Maybe some of the childcare businesses who are making $$ off of daycare for wrap-around to 4K would want to sponsor this?
Too many aides and assistants?
NO WAY. Have you seen some of these kids? There is no way a teacher can teach and babysit at the same time. That's what aides are for.
Time for the teachers to start living in today's reality. There are so many people out of work and many more have taken pay cuts, contributed more toward their health care and suffered other reductions in pensions and other benefits. Why should our teachers be immune to the economics affecting all of us???
My suggestions for the next contract are:
(1) a cut of 5% in current teacher, support staff and administration pay.
(2) Increase the employee contribution to health care (if they even make one) to 50% of the cost.
(3) Reduce starting pay for new hires by 10%.
(4) Eliminate ANY sort of "early" retirement. Teachers can work as long as the rest of us. For God's sake they only work 9 months out of a year and it is not a hazardous profession like fire and police. Early retirement just means sucking the district taxpayers dry.
(5) Reduce pension benefits to an average, market level OR eliminate district funded retirement and let employees fund their own 401K exclusively.
Perhaps some of our teachers may not like these proposals. If so, then please move and find another district to work in. We can't afford you any longer. You should want to teach here because you love the profession. Finding work is easy these days. Just ask all the unemployed.
If we can lower our districts salary cost, we might be able to avoid cutting positions. Like it or not, that is happening in all levels of government and the private sector. Our district cannot afford to be a financial Utopia for anyone.
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