At the recent United School Board meeting, the members met in a socially distanced setting to give an idea of how a classroom would look with students six feet apart. Superintendent Jeff Whitsitt reports that along with looking into how the year will be, the board also discussed the budget:
“We had to amend our budget a little bit. Nothing bad. We had a good budget year. We overspent in our O&M fund, but it was very easily explained. We had a lot of fiber work going on throughout the county connecting our buildings via fiber and we had a six figure, $105,000 payment that went out that I had not factored in. I did not know was coming, but did not cost us anything. It was just a payment that I had to make that I was not planning on,” Whitsitt says.
Whitsitt also shares the district is looking at restructuring their gym bond with interest rates being low right now. Only four years remain in paying off the bond.
As the 2020-2021 school year continues to get closer, districts are anxiously waiting on all guidelines as to how the year will look, says Superintendent Whitsitt:
“There are some things we are still working out. Lot of details and procedural stuff we have to work on. You read enough guidance and enough articles; you can find data that tells you anything and everything either way. We are weighing a lot of things trying to come up with the best possible solution, but we do know that we would love for our kids to be in school. That is our job, that’s our life. That would be our first choice. The classifier on that statement though is that we have to do it as safe as we possibly can and that is the stuff that is really making that hard. Our desires can’t oversee what is the right thing to do either,” Whitsitt states.
Whitsitt is looking to have a more concrete decision out to the district on mid to late July.
