QUEST gets a reprieve
Over $200,000 slashed from budget
By Bobbi Mlynar (Contact)
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
The QUEST program survived more than $200,000 in budget cuts Wednesday evening, when board of education members met at Mary Herbert Education Center.
The popular after-school enrichment program had been at-risk in a listing of cuts recommended by the Performance Based Budgeting team. The team had evaluated district needs and prioritized them according to ratings given by team members.
QUEST had been listed in Tier I of the PBB recommendations, which placed the program within the first group of recommended cuts.
Several board members requested that decision be reconsidered when the topic came up during a board meeting earlier this month. Board member Brent Windsor met in the interim with Superintendent John Heim and Assistant Superintendent for Finance Rob Scheib to discuss other options for saving funds.
In the end, the board voted unanimously to accept an amended list of reductions from the PBB’s Tier I and Tier II levels.
The savings from Tier I include: $6,369, supplemental budget lines overall; $30,000, general operations supplies; $8,800, building administration supplies; $20,000, O&M equipment purchases.
The savings from Tier II include: $17,500, general fund budget lines; $67,000, one central office administration position; $6,369, supplemental budget lines overall (second level of cuts); $30,000, general operations supplies (second level of cuts).
The reductions total $216,038.
Board member Mike Crouch asked whether the QUEST cut could be brought up again this year.
“We couldn’t bring it up at a later time because we will be hiring staff,” Heim said.
Windsor asked who would be responsible for monitoring the cuts.
“That would be Rob, who never met a nickel he didn’t love,” Heim said.
The board also approved policy handbooks for Emporia Middle School staff and students in grades pre-kindergarten through six. The handbooks had been intended for a first reading by board members. However, after minor text-tweaking, the board voted to adopt the handbooks.
The board also approved the consent agenda, a slate of standard items that rarely require discussion.
Among those items approved were:
-- a request for a stimulus subgrant for Food Service equipment. Scheib said only $800,000 was available for all of Kansas. “It’s very competitive and not a good chance that we will even get any,” he said, adding that no matching funds or other requirements were attached to the grants.
-- a request to let bids for Food Service food and supplies for the coming school year.
-- a request to let bids for district paper and supplies for the coming school year.
-- transportation requests from the Emporia Christian School Daycare program, city of Emporia for Emporia Convention and Visitors Bureau, and Lyon County 4-Hers.
-- QPA annual reports
-- an annual district career and technical education program improvement plan format for the Family and Consumer Sciences program at Emporia High School.
The board met in executive session to discuss contract negotiations, but took no action.
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Posted by spensanity (anonymous) on May 28, 2009 at 6:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)
It is too bad we have to cut from school budgets that affect 100 percent of the students in USD 253 and the QUEST program is an after-school program that does not benefit ALL of the students in this school district. Why do you have a PBB team to make the recommended cuts and you don't follow through with their recommendations?
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