As it stands, the Mid-Prairie Community School District’s Board Policy concerning high school graduation requirements mandates that starting with the 2016 class, all students must take one of three assessments before graduating: ACT, Accuplacer and ALEKS, or ACT WorkKeys.  During the Board of Education Meeting on Monday, High School Principal Chuck Banks suggested that this requirement is out of date and should be removed from Board Policy 505.5.

“The WorkKeys and ALEKS are no longer valid,” Banks said.  “The ACT, as you know, state schools no longer require that for all students, and the Accuplacer is primarily for students that are going to Kirkwood or a junior college.”

After giving an example of a student who had to take a test under this policy that was not required for the junior college program they were applying to, Banks stated, “We still want to encourage kids to take these assessments if they need them, but I feel like we have students that are taking these and obviously it’s kind of a waste of their time and resources.”

“I would ask that we just take this piece out.  We still offer the support for students who want to take the ACT. Each student gets a voucher for one ACT test, which we’ll continue to encourage,” he said.

A motion was made to remove this requirement for specific assessments from the Board Policy, which passed on its first reading.

School Finance

During the portion of the meeting in which the Board considered school finance, Business Manager Jeff Swartzentruber presented the Fiscal Year 2022 Annual Treasurer’s Report. 

“Management Fund is the only fund that we have in here that’s negative this year, and that was somewhat by design, but it was also because our workers’ comp premium jumped a lot more than what we anticipated,” Swartzentruber noted.

“The other thing that I would highlight on here is the enterprise funds.  Nutrition is the biggest part of the Enterprise Fund,” he said, and then pointed out that the fund began the year in the negative but ended with a positive balance of $211,000.  For at least the last decade, the nutrition program has never been in the black. 

“So, to see this as a positive is really exciting.  But this is one of the positives of COVID, because everybody ate free for two years and the government was giving us $4.05 or $4.10 from the federal side for our lunches.  And we would be charging $3.45 if we were doing it. We’re getting $.65, $.60 extra.  So that’s really helping us,” Swartzentruber added.

The Federal Assistance program ended June 30, 2022, so excess nutrition funding is not expected to continue.

The Board passed a motion to accept the Annual Treasurer’s Report, then moved on to consider a Special Education Deficit Spending Authority Resolution. 

The school district faces a deficit of nearly $69,500, which is nearly $200,000 less than it faced the previous year.  Special Education deficits occur when special education students leave the school; if the student must pay for transportation or other special services to receive education elsewhere, they are able to bill the school district for those expenses.  Fewer special education students left Mid-Prairie schools in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, than in the previous year. 

The Board passed a motion to authorize the Superintendent to submit a request to the School Budget Review Committee for additional allowable growth of up to $75,000 to cover the deficit in Special Education funding from the fiscal year that ended this June.

Future Planning

Considerable time was spent discussing when the Board might next seek General Obligation Bond funding and what the School District’s priorities might be when it comes to making facilities improvements.  This will be a continuing topic of discussion for the Board.