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No drastic increases in the Warsaw schools' budget for 2000, coupled with the area's usually high assessed property values, should lead to steady tax rates, the school board learned Monday.
Rande Thorpe, business manager for Warsaw Community Schools, said that while the size of the school corporation is in the top 13 percent in the state (37th out of 294), the corporation's tax rate is in the bottom 21 percent statewide.
Three factors help the Warsaw schools district, he said: a strong assessed value, a strong economy and WCS' conservative spending patterns.
The proposed budget for 2000 is $42,169,185, a 2.74 percent increase over the 1999 actual budget of $41,044,905.
The largest portion of the budget, the general fund, makes up almost 74 percent of the total budget, he said. And most of the general fund (71.6 percent) is salaries, with the rest being benefits, supplies, utilities and equipment.
The 3.6 percent increase in the general fund is mostly due to insurance increases, Thorpe said.
The capital projects fund is proposed to increase approximately 5.8 percent, Thorpe said, with the largest expense being replacement air conditioning units at Edgewood Middle School.
Computer equipment, at an estimated $1 million, also is included in the capital projects fund.
The WCS debt service fund decreases in the 2000 budget, and the transportation fund, which projects the purchase of six buses in 2000, is estimated to increase from approximately $2.6 million in 1999 to $2.8 million in 2000.
Thorpe also said WCS has been operating with a deficit balance for three years and has been using the cash balance to keep the budget in the black.
"If we continue with a deficit budget, we will run into problems," he said. "So we haven't increased the budget as much as revenue is increasing. In the past, we built a cash balance to use when things got tight."
The board will hold a special meeting at 7 p.m. Aug. 23 to formally adopt the budget.
The board also held off on approving a "certificate of achievement" for high school seniors who meet all other graduation requirements but fail to pass the ISTEP+.
The certificate would not be the same as a diploma, assistant superintendent Dr. Tony Etienne said, and would be "more our recognition of their efforts than to help them out in the business world."
According to WCHS principal Paul Crousore, the certificates would apply to 15 to 30 percent of seniors.
Board member Roy Szymanski disagreed with the proposal.
"Is this certificate of achievement another lowering of the bar, another lowering of the standards?" he said.
Brad Brail, board member, said the certificate would be a compassionate way to deal with students who passed all required courses and met all other requirements for graduation except for passing the ISTEP+.
"We owe it to students who have been in the system for 12 years to allow them to complete the journey they started with dignity. ..."
Crousore said the certificate would give the students something to work toward and a reason to seek remediation classes so they could eventually earn their diplomas.
Szymanski, however, remained skeptical: "I don't think we really need to give a certificate of achievement for mediocrity."
The board also heard a report from Crousore on the first year of block scheduling at WCHS.
A survey by a statistics class revealed that a majority of students prefer block scheduling over a traditional seven-period day, as does a majority of staff.
Teachers feel more stress with block scheduling, however, because using 90-minute classes requires a variety of teaching methods.
"Block scheduling is an ongoing process," Crousore said, noting that the administration will try to be more supportive.
The board also approved a policy change to comply with the state regulation requiring compulsory school attendance of "all persons between the age of 7 and until the 18th birthday."
The board's next meeting will be the special budget session on Aug. 23.
