Chinook School Board Passes Budget & Addresses Bus Issue
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Superintendent Fred Hoffman noted that with Chinook High School Business Clerk Moses Deanon being gone to drop his daughter off at the University of North Carolina and Chrissy Downs gone due to personal reasons that the monthly school board meeting minutes may not be released prior to the start of the school year. Mr. Hoffman expressed, “I think it is important to note the tax cuts made last night when the board adopted the budget as well as to give an update on our bussing situation. Hopefully we have enough buses here to run all three routes when the school year starts!
Mr. Hoffman began by stating, “The Chinook School Boards of Trustees adopted their budget for 2023-24 school year. In March, the board anticipated a combined, overall tax bill of $33,000 less than 2022-23.” Mr. Hoffman added, “The local tax burden for the two school districts was $2,087,595 in 2022-23 and it will be $1,972,561 in 2023-24. The board cut taxes by $55,958 in the elementary district (approximately 33 mills) while the high school tax cut was $59,079 (approximately 16 mills) for a total of $115,000 in tax cuts. The board wanted to provide some much-needed tax relief, while not hampering the school district’s operations.”
Mr. Hoffman went on to say, “The combined ‘Total of All Funds’ [budgeted funds] adopted by the Elementary and High School Board of Trustees is just over 6.2 million dollars.” In addition, Mr Hoffman stated, “the figure does not include non-budgeted funds, such as Title I or inter-local agreement funds.” Excluding coaches and activity bus drivers, the school districts have 62 daily employees, split almost evenly between the junior high / high school and the two elementary schools according to Hoffman.”
“The board also approved 35 out-of-district students’ enrollment in the Chinook Elementary District (K-8) and 8 out-of-district students in the Chinook High School District. Three (3) of those 43 students are new,” stated Hoffman. In addition, Hoffman went on to say, “Most of our out-of-district students reside in the Zurich, Bear Paw and Harlem school districts. From a school funding standpoint, and this is an over generalization, K-6 students generate $5,962 in funding or funding authority while 7-12 students generate $7,634 per student. In a general sense, that means the 18 out-of-district students in grades 7-12 help with the general fund budgeting to the tune of just over $100,000 while the 35 students in K-6 give the elementary budget a boost of around $200,000 annually.”
Hoffman addressed the bus situation, “We are still waiting on the delivery of our new school buses, which is largely a result of the buses being ordered more than 2 months later than anticipated. The new-to-us e-bus is here, a 2016 Ford Explorer. It is a little newer and has 20,000 fewer miles than our Ford Expedition that is currently used for staff and some student activity transportation.” Hoffman went on to say, “The 2016 Explorer has a better crash safety rating then our 2014 Expedition. Our spare school bus should be here by next week and one of the two larger route buses should be ready for delivery by the end of this week (August 11th).” In conclusion Hoffman stated, “We are not certain when it will actually get delivered. We are also hoping to have our 14-passenger microbus, for smaller activities, here by mid-September. A CDL is not required to drive that particular bus and given our continued shortage of finding bus drivers, this should assist us in covering some smaller activities, including Golf, Cross Country, FFA, Band, Cheer, Tennis, etc.”
In conclusion Hoffman said, “While we are hopeful, we’ll have buses to cover all three routes, it is possible we will still be short a bus when the school year begins. If we do not have the buses here to cover all the routes, parents will need to drive their students in until they arrive. If we have one large bus, we will cover Route 3 while Route 1, which includes Zurich and Elloam Road, will not have bus service, until the 2nd bus arrives.”
