Notes From The Rock Hill School Board April Work Session

The Rock Hill School Board held their April Work Session at the District Office on Monday, April 11. In one action item, following an Executive Session, the board voted 7-0 to support the Administration's recommendation to terminate an employee.

The major focus of the meeting was the administration's plan for meeting next years budget. Currently, before cuts, they are projecting $122,356,112 in expenditures and only $115,602,000 in revenue for a shortfall of $6,754,112. The plan includes a mixture of fees, reducing salaries, eliminating programs and positions. The Superintendent asked the board to consider using reserve funds (up to $2 million dollars) to give some employees a 2% salary increase and to increase the local tax rate by near the maximum allowed for this year (about 4 mils). The district has posted a video of the presentation and a copy of the power point presentation. It is difficult to view in anything other than Internet Explorer.

Click here to watch video presentation.
Click here to see copy of the slides that were presented.

The superintendent will be asking for board approval for the part of her plan dealing with employees (most of it) because it is important to communicate this to the affected employees as soon as possible. This will be done at the April business meeting on April 25, 2011. However, nothing will be finalized until the June Business meeting (4th Monday in June). There will be several presentations of the plan before a formal presentation of the budget the second Monday in June.

The board heard a presentation on changing Student Insurance Policy JLA so that it will comply with the plan for next year's budget.

There was a presentation on the 135 day enrollment report. Of significance, district attendance has dropped by 407 students from last year, including a drop of 52 at the high school level which has not been impacted by the opening of York Prep Charter School. The 400+ students has resulted in a reduction of almost $700,000 in revenue for next years budget.

The board heard an update on the change in Free and Reduced lunch numbers (see chart below):

The board  heard that the district would be going out for bids on privatizing food service and Walter Brown gave an update on legislative issues. You can view a newscast presentation of the meeting below. I will be posting comments later in the week.