The reserve, which was $2,359,436 at the start of last year, tanked to nearly half a million dollars in the red. Besides pointing a finger at special education, the district is also blaming that depletion on a levy adjustment for an elementary reading curriculum and a big loss of money due to enrollment once again dropping lower than projected. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis year,\u201d member Welty said, questioning this last point, \u201cusing ADM figures, I came up with 60 fewer kids.\u201d Multiplying that with \u201cthe $12,300 per kid, I calculated that at about $740,000,\u201d which, he added, \u201cdoesn\u2019t account for the entire $3 million deficiency in revenues.\u201d
\n\u201cMember Welty, I think you missed a section of our conversation,\u201d the Superintendent retorted, referring to the fact that member Johnston had just asked a similar question. \u201cThat was what member Johnston just asked \u2014\u201d Business Chair Harala chimed in, \u201cand then you re-asked.\u201d
\n\u201cI think that question was legitimate from Mr. Welty,\u201d member Johnston countered. \u201cLooking at the numbers: they don\u2019t quite jive.\u201d
\nAt one point, as the meeting progressed, Harala snipped under her breath that some Board members \u201cshould put their listening ears on.\u201d
\nHarala also ventured a query of her own: \u201cI have a question, before any other Board members start asking questions again. It\u2019s kind of a–it\u2019s a four-part question in one, that–aaaaaaah \u2014so I keep thinking about–you know, there are some–I\u2019m just gonna ask them: so what can we control, with where we\u2019re at? And what can we do about what we can control? What can\u2019t we control with how this budget happened, and what can we do about that? I just–we need–what–this is not a good state for us to be in. And what\u2019s the plan for moving forward? So I\u2019d just \u2014 I\u2019d like to hear from administration on that \u2014\u201d<\/p>\n
Expressing what everyone else in the room was thinking, Mr. G. replied: \u201cI\u2019m not sure I followed your four-part question, but I think I know where you\u2019re headed.\u201d
\nOver the past four years, whenever our current Chair of the Business Committee has asked a finance-related question, I\u2019ve found myself fumbling with my listening ears, wondering how in the hell I can bring myself some relief by taking them OFF. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Loren is often a week late for his Reader Column because the Reader goes to print Tuesday night when we have our regular Board…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24022"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24022"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24032,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24022\/revisions\/24032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}