At the recent United School board meeting, state construction funds, amending the budget and new hires were discussed. Superintendent Jeff Whitsitt highlights the action items:
“The state came out with some new construction money and I was able to, before our deadline for agenda, I was able to get in an action item on our agenda. We passed a resolution to apply for rebuild Illinois funds. We have some projects out here we would like to complete and the rebuild Illinois money, it’s not a ton of money when you talk state dollars, but there is money out there to be had to basically get people back to work and back on payrolls. We have a couple projects we are applying for that we think are worthy of that. We did amend our budget, our O and M funds. We were going to overspend it a little bit so we amended our budget and it will sit for 30 days now and in June we will come back and finalize that,” reports Whitsitt.
The board was able to hire four new teachers to fill vacancies in the district.
These unprecedented times have been a learning curve from the beginning. Whitsitt reports one major item learned was that remote learning will most likely be used in the future:
“We’ve had several occasions. Last year, was a great example with all the snow days. Everybody was kind of on the verge of looking into remote learning and e-learning days and things like that anyway. If anything, we have learned that it is possible and is something we can da and it is going to be a part of who we are from now on. We have to start planning around that as well. It is just going to be a component of all the school districts I believe. I think it can and will be a positive. We talk out here a lot about how we’re not blessed with a wide curriculum as far as offering, so this might be our means to offering opportunities that we are not always capable of doing. There is a lot of ways to utilize this in a positive manner,” Whitsitt says.
