Superintendent's October 2009 Update
by Mark Schweer
October 12, 2009
Unfortunately, the big news in October is the Across the Board
Cut ordered by Governor Culver last week. The 10% cut for Lewis
Central will be $1.2 million. What that means is that we will
receive $1.2 million less in state aid revenue for the remainder of
this fiscal year (June 30, 2010). In the very near future, the
Administrative Team and the Board of Education will be determining
both a short range and long range budgetary plan for dealing with
this budgetary shortfall.
Incumbent's Dorene Scheffel, Robert Hendrix, and Daryl Weilage were
re-elected to the Lewis Central Board of Directors. Rob Livingston
is the newly elected member. Rob is originally from Colorado. He
has a bachelor’s degree from Iowa State University and a law degree
from Drake University. He is a partner in the Stuart Tinley Law
Firm here in Council Bluffs. He and his wife Katie have 3 children.
This is the 6th term for Daryl Weilage. The legislature recently
changed the length of board member terms to 4 years with elections
being held every other year.
Schools in Iowa are receiving federal stimulus dollars. In addition
to our basic Title 1 allocation, we are projected to receive an
additional $181,516. Title 1 is a federal program providing
additional support in the areas of reading and math. For several
years now, we have had to use general fund dollars to make up the
difference between revenue and actual expenditures. So we are going
to use the additional stimulus dollars to offset the difference. We
will also receive $415,710 in IDEA Part B (Special Education)
dollars. We are going to use these dollars to offset the difference
between IDEA Part B revenue and actual expenditures, fund a
Co-Teaching professional development training program, and fund
summer school. The cost of the summer school program offered last
summer was $76,120.85. We intend to offer a summer school program
again next summer and use these dollars to pay for that as well.
The Iowa Legislature used federal stimulus dollars to fund
allowable growth. We received $208,427 at the end of the last
fiscal year. We used this money to offset the 1.5% across the board
cut of $166,400 and the Phase 1 cut of $17,700. The state
stabilization (state aid of allowable growth) for this fiscal year
is $1,078,932. Approximately $900,000 of that amount will be used
to cover salary/benefit increase for the 09/10 school year.
Preliminary certified student enrollment count information from
October 1 indicates an increase of 22 students with an overall
increase of 81 students. Our open enrollment in increased from 508
to 540 and our open enrollment out declined from 115 to 100 so we
have a net gain on open enrollment of 440 students.
