School Board Requests Right to Pick School Start Date
Oskaloosa School Board 2012-13
by Amy Langdon
Oskaloosa, Iowa – The Oskaloosa School Board will be requesting a waiver from the state to allow it to set its own school calendar.
The board voted last July to oppose an Iowa state mandate that schools start no earlier than the first week of September. The mandate continues, but waivers are possible.
“We believe that, as a school district, when you start school, when you end school, the school calendar should be the responsibility of local boards and local districts and not held hostage by when outside people say we should be starting school,” said Oskaloosa Schools Superintendent Russ Reiter.
The board unanimously approved the waiver be requested.
Reiter also gave the results of a recent external audit. He said the district’s general fund balance went up and outstanding debt went down as the district pays down some loans for capital projects. Reiter said last year the district decreased its debt from approximately $7.9 million to $6.5 million and he hopes it’ll be below $5.0 million by the end of the year.
Matthew Dunsbergen, principal at Oskaloosa Elementary School, gave an update on the school’s move towards a new grading system for third graders. Currently, kindergarten through second graders don’t receive letter grades and the school wants to do the same for third graders.
Dunsbergen said parents of next year’s third graders were surveyed and the majority were either neutral or in favor of the change.
“Our [District Leadership Team] did an outstanding job as leaders of our district to see some of the difficulties that this could cause for us and put together an action plan for implementation,” said Dungsbergen.
The school board also approved several business items including:
– Receiving bids for a new 77-passenger school bus. Dale Nelson, maintenance and transportation director for Oskaloosa Schools, said he’s also looking into the purchasing two used buses and an SUV. Reiter said the average age of buses for Oskaloosa schools is 9 years and he’d like to see that number reduced.
– Receiving bids for sale of the student-constructed home on M Street. Reiter said the house will be completed by the end of the school year. He recommended a minimum bid price of $170,000 with deadlines required by May 1st.
– The publishing of an amendment to the 2012/2013 budget since the year’s expenditure exceeded what was estimated last April. Reiter said the increased spending was due to the increase in food costs following new federal regulations. He added that additional costs will be covered by revenue or an existing fund balance and will not lead to an increase in taxes. A public hearing will be held at next month’s board meeting on May 14th to discuss the amendment.
– The approval of the 2013/2014 certified budget following a public hearing, during which there were no comments.
The 90-minute meeting ended with the approval of two resignations – Kindergarten teacher Katy Hafner and fourth-grade teacher Stephanie Mitrisin.
