Come Vote at the Annual Meeting! September 24th at 7 PM in the HS Media Room

Click on the link below to access the agenda and packet for the annual meeting as well as the agenda for the monthly committee meetings of the whole.

This is a meeting every elector from the ECSD can vote on the proposed tax levy. It is an advisory vote, which means the board has the final say, but they have the opportunity to get the pulse of the community at this meeting.

Highlights: The total tax levy allowed under the revenue limit for the ECSD district has increased by about $120,000 since last year. State Aid has increased by about $180,000 but the amount owed on the debt increased by nearly $350,000 this year due to the backloaded funding on the high school loan. Equalized property values are predicted to remain relatively stagnant, with a minute gain of 0.13% expected. Mill rate is expected to increase by 17 cents per thousand. Remember all the figures aren't finalized that go into the calculation of the mill rate and this is just an estimate.

Most informative about the data presented in the packet available at the school web site involves open enrollment. From 2009 to present, the open enrollment imbalance has more than doubled from a loss of $124,014.24 in 2009 to a loss of $254,172 predicted for this year. And the administration isn't convinced there's a problem yet. This has a double whammy impact. It reduces the state aid next year by dwindling the enrollment and sucks out the funding for this year as well to pay outgoing tuition. Good grief.  Anybody want to have a competition on how we could have spent that 250 grand they let walk out the doors? How many Ipads would that have bought? Let's see here. I see them offered on amazon.com for $605 for the 32 gig high end one. That would pay for nearly 420 of the suckers. Or, if you scale back to the 16 gig model, they could buy 635 of them and supply over a third of the students with them. Good good in heaven, in 3 years they could get every kid in the district an Ipad with the money they are sending down the highway to other districts because "there's no problem here." Indeed.

Stay tuned for my article in the September 26 edition of the Evansville Review regarding the annual meeting results and the committee meetings of the whole. I'll highlight the tax levy and voting results and any committee meeting results that were interesting.

http://www.ecsdnet.org/School-Board/Board-Meetings/2012-2013-School-Year/index.html