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The West Burlington School Board met last (Monday) night with a fairly light agenda.
The board needed to approve an expenditure from the 2017-2018 school year, that was much more than they are accustomed to approving for special education. In 2016-2017 Special Ed had a deficit of $138,607, that was compared to the previous year of $16,000. But for last year, the deficit was just short of $227,000, a figure that Superintendent David Schmidt said sent him diving into the districts finances. What he found was that there is not one or two major factors that is causing the rising cost of special education in the district. He told the board that they have made some changes to some of the variables that they can control, but the needs based education is case by case and therefore impossible to predict.
High School Principal Bruce Snodgrass told the board they are looking into very poor turnout for parent teacher conferences. He says he plans to meet with the staff and try to find the cause of the lowest turnout of parents in his tenure. He also told the board that he attended a conference the previous week and learned of several changes to state requirements for graduation as well as school policies. He told the board he and Superintendent Schmidt will be looking at the changes and may suggest some future changes to board policies.
The board also heard and agreed to a shared teaching position with the Burlington School District for students taking courses in Health Occupations. West Burlington and Burlington students share the teacher and can attend classes at either school under the agreement. Burlington’s School Board still needs to approve that agreement.
The board closed its public meeting then went into a closed session to discuss ongoing litigation, they did not provide any information on that meeting to the press.
