West Carroll: 'Let the Voters Decide' on One Percent Sales Tax

By Michael Miller For The Prairie Advocate News

THOMSON – The West Carroll School District’s proposed one percent sales tax on items purchased within Carroll County moved forward on Wednesday, December 15th, as the Board elected to give the county voters the right to decide the matter.

The meeting was attended by Board members Tim Atherton, Mike Highland, Bill Sweeney, John Brigham, Beverly Kilpatrick and Board Superintendent David Boyd, with Deb Klein being absent. Also in attendance were District Superintendent Craig Mathers, High School Principal Bob Lamb, Middle School Principal Julie Katzenberger, Primary and Intermediate School Principal Jeannette Ashby, Special Education/Early Childhood Principal Pam Delp, and Recording Secretary/Business Office Manager Sandra Aude. Brad Field and Monika Burkholder were also absent.

Immediately preceding the meeting, the District conducted a Public Hearing of Truth in Taxation, during which the Board heard a brief summary of the annual tax levy for the District from Mathers. No questions or comments were offered, and the Hearing was closed by unanimous vote.

The Board heard correspondence from Diane Buber, who is requesting an organizational group be formed at the High School; namely, a chapter of S.A.D.D., or Students Against Destructive Decisions.

Katzenberger led off the Administrative Reports. She thanked Janis Jones, Mary Jo Kelley, Sheri Blake, and Jan Schoening for organizing the November academic fair, and congratulated Shannon Sleeman for winning the Savanna Women’s Club award, and also Christy Ralston and Rachel Dykstra for capturing the FFA award. Among her other news items was the announcement of the WCMS’s AYP dance for students that have met or exceeded AYP standards on the 2010 ISAT for reading and math on Monday, January 3rd during the 7th and 8th hours.

Ms. Delp followed with news from the Special Education and Early Childhood departments. She reported that the department recently finished the second turn around of the December Child Count, whereby each special ed teacher and speech therapist verifies information on every special education student on their case load in the District. At present West Carroll has 262 students with an active Individualized Education Program, comprising 19 percent of the total student population.

She also summarized a flow chart which was created to help document the flow of procedures necessary when a child with a special need is identified.

In the Early Childhood portion of the report, Delp said that two of the District’s Parent Educators will attend training in Springfield on Perinatal Depression Screening and will then report their findings back to the staff. She also noted that the Santa’s Workshop Parent Child Interaction activity was well attended, and gives parents the chance to make homemade gifts and crafts together.

Lamb’s written report announced that Student Registration for 2010-11 begins in late January, and congratulated several West Carroll students for making IMEA All State Music; Emily Rogers for Bass Clarinet, Kris Corrigeuz for Chorus Bass II, Mark Miller for Chorus, Tenor II, and Niki Covello for Future Music Educators Seminar. Lamb also congratulated the following students for qualifying as State of Illinois Scholars: Andrew Behnke, Taylor Brunner, Kaiti Mathey, Mark Miller, Loren Thatcher, Zackary Timm, and Sam Wilkinson (Photo and report was in the 12/15/10 issue of the PANews).

Ashby’s brief report announced success on the Primary School’s Christmas concerts, crediting Anne Parry for her preparation of the students. She also said that over 75 students participated in the School’s “Make and Take” event on December 8th. Also, twenty four students qualified for the Geography Bee that was held on December 15th, with the winner to take a written test by National Geographic to qualify for State competition.

The absent Field also submitted a report for the Technology Department,where he reported 25 open and 28 closed work orders. The Skyward training is now complete, and Field thanked Dave Baisden for his help on the Grade History Conversion. Some of the ongoing Technology projects include software installs, SMART Board installs and the Tech Plan. The server crash at the Intermediate School has been completely addressed with the necessary data rebuilt. Field attended the Illinois Education and Technology Conference in Springfield and said it was a good way to have face to face contact with software and hardware vendors.

Mathers told the Board that the District’s overall attendance rate for November was 94.75 percent. He also presented them with documentation that the Illinois House of Representatives has voted to overturn Governor Pat Quinn’s veto on a bill that originally made the performance evaluations of all public employees private. Among the other highlights of Mather’s presentation was a definition of rules regarding when a high school student can take the PSAE and how that test will be tallied for purposes of federal accountability.

1% tax resolution

The highlight of the evening’s meeting was the Board’s final vote on the “resolution requesting the Carroll County Board to submit to the Voters of the county at the April 5th, 2011 consolidated election, the question of imposing retailers and service occupation taxes to be used exclusively for school facility purposes”, as it is worded in the official agenda. Mathers reported on the recent meeting that occurred between himself, Mayor Larry Stebbins of Savanna, Highland, and J.C. Carey (representing area business owners) with Representative Jim Sacia of Illinois’ 89th Congressional District. He told the Board the group submitted their proposal to Sacia but were advised that little would get done in a veto session, and that they would need to use the legislation currently in place. As to the issue of Palatine Oil, the consensus was that the company could always pull out at any time and that the one percent tax constituted a “long term solution” that the District should take advantage of while they could.

Each board member in turn voiced their feelings on the issue. Brigham said that while he realized it wouldn’t make the business leaders very happy, he was in favor of allowing the voters to decide. Sweeney agreed, saying that the Board was merely putting the item on the ballot and that the opposition still had the opportunity to present their side and “dispel the vote”. He added that there was no real guarantee that Palatine Oil would stay in the area anyway, with the only tie being their ten year lease. He said he felt the tax hike increase would allow the District to forgo raising property taxes.

Kilpatrick said she had found that other counties hadn’t seen a decrease in sales once the sale tax was raised, and that this was “a better deal for taxpayers in the long run”.

Boyd said that his reservations about the issue had always been largely limited to the timing of the proposed increase, but that the voters would have the opportunity to answer these concerns when the matter went to the ballot.

Highland said he’d been in favor of the item from the beginning, and favored leaving it up to the voters. Atherton agreed, saying he felt it “would be stupid to not at least give it to the voters”.

After a motion from Highland, which was seconded by Atherton, the Board then elected, unanimously, to request the County Board to put the one percent sales tax hike on the April ballot for the County voters to decide.

Proposed tax levy

Next up was the 2010 Tax Levy, and Mathers presented detailed documentation of the proposed levy for all the various District funds. The proposed levy amount for 2010 is $5,594,190.77, with the previous year’s levy totaling $5,840,486.00. This year’s proposed levy represents a 4.2 percent decrease over last year’s proposed levy. Also, the 2010 proposed levy represents a 2.3 percent increase over last year’s extension (levy being defined as “funds the district asks for based on proposed need and EAV (Equalized Assessment Valuation) and “extension” being defined as “money the district receives based on EAT and legal tax limits.

Mathers noted some key elements to consider as the district planned for this year; the continuing decrease in enrollment, the coming expiration of the WCEA contract, the fact that IMRF and Social Security tax levies are lower due to fund balances in those areas, the fact that any potential reduction in staff will be paid from the Education Fund, General State Aid is an estimate based on State of Illinois finances and the continuing concern over health insurance increases.

The Board unanimously approved the tax levy for this year.

FY financial audit

Justin Krusey of Benning Group Professional Accounting gave a report on the District’s fiscal year financial audit. The lengthy report was largely positive and was based on the regular basis of accounting. Mr. Krusey told the Board that the District’s overall score for the audit was 3.6 out of a possible 4.0 and that that was considered “very good”, with only a few areas of concern. Mr. Krusey did state that the district’s structure of internal controls needs to be reviewed, and that the scholarship fund records should be on every active report to the board, “every time”. He added that these areas were not specific to West Carroll and that all districts seem to have these issues.

The Board reviewed a first draft of the High School Curriculum Handbook, with Lamb saying that one of the goals was to align all course offerings with the State of Illinois and with the Race to the Top mandates. He noted only two real changes from last year’s handbook. The handbook proposed offering a “Foods 3” and a “Foods 4” class, and some course name changes. The first reading was approved by the full Board.

Lamb also spoke about a proposed “Certificate of Employability” which would potentially be issued to exceptional students to bolster their diploma and highlight their readiness for the work field to business owners. He said the certificates would “give seniors a jump start with local businesses”. Students will be able to pick 5 teachers to rate them on ten different characteristics, and if if they meet the criteria, they will get the certificate. Boyd questioned whether or not this might diminish the importance of the high school diploma but Lamb said this was something very special that only a small percentage of students would likely achieve, exampling that in Freeport only 11 percent of students qualified for the certificate.

The 2010/2011 High School Prom now has a date; it will be held on Friday, April 29th at the Galena Territory, with school being dismissed at 12:40 pm in order for students to properly prepare.

The 2011-2012 Strategic Action Plan was briefly touched on at the meeting’s conclusion, with Mathers commenting that there was currently no funding source for the planned project list. He added that he hoped to invite support groups for their input sometime in the second semester, and also to initiate a parent survey. Current teacher evaluations are on hold because of new State of Illinois laws.

The open portion of the meeting concluded with the Board going into executive session to discuss employee issues, collective bargaining, purchase or lease of real property and student discipline cases.