A local educator checked in Wednesday night on the status of the Emporia school district budget during a board meeting at the Mary Herbert Learning Center.
Bill Barnes spoke to the board about the complexities of the district budget. He asked what the board was planning to do, or what steps already had been taken, to simplify the process.
Barnes asked whether there had been a favorable or unfavorable variance in the state aid that had been estimated and incorporated into the budget.
“You would assume that ... but you would be wrong,” Heim said. The district still does not have a report from the state.
“We’re about halfway through (the fiscal year) and still not sure of the answers,” Board President Grant Riles said.
Barnes appeared at the meeting during the public comment session.
During the action meeting, the board voted to hire Britton Hart to replace Jerry Cook as assistant principal and athletic director at Emporia High School, effective July 1. Cook announced earlier this year that he planned to resign at the end of the year.
Hart had been an industrial arts teacher at an Olathe high school and currently is assistant principal and athletic director for Prairie View High School in LaCygne. He was named the Kansas Cross Country/Track and Field Association’s 6A Coach of the Year in 2005; the Olathe Daily News Men’s Coach of the Year for 2004-05; and the NAIA Certification of Achievement for Champions of Character 2005.
EHS Principal Scott Sheldon and teacher Teresa Maley talked to the board about additional “weighted classes” in the school’s enrollment bulletin for the 2007-08 school year.
Because the weighted classes are more challenging than standard classes, a small percentage is added to the student’s grade-point average, which may bump up a “B” grade to an “A-minus,” for example. The more-difficult weighted classes are helpful to students when their transcripts are under scrutiny by admissions officials at larger universities.
“There’s a lot of difference between applying to go to Butler Community College and applying to go to Notre Dame,” Maley said.
The board approved minor modifications to the 2007-08 school calendar to rearrange teachers’ work-day time following parent-teacher conferences. The modifications do not affect the number of student-attendance days or the number of contract days for the teachers.