By Andrew Walsh
awalsh@wbcowqel.com
October is five-year forecast time and Bucyrus Treasurer Ryan Cook had good news to report.
As it stands, the district is set to end fiscal year 2015 $221,000 in the black. And while going out the full five years of the forecast is notoriously tricky, if everything holds as is the district will end this five-year cycle with a $2.9 million cash balance.
“Cautious optimism” was Cook’s phrase regarding this news.
Part of the difficulty of the five-year forecast is that state budgets operate on two-year cycles, of which the current one is set to expire in July. Bucyrus currently receives 80 percent of its funds from Columbus so the next budget round is definitely one that bears watching.
Reasons for optimism are that the other 30 percent of local funding is likely to remain steady as it is not levy dependent. Also, whereas most districts are in the 75- to 80-percent range of salary and benefits of total budget, Bucyrus has trimmed this potion to 48 percent and 19 percent salary and benefits.
Open enrollment out remain an area of concern, as $2.2 million to 2.4 million leave the district annually to follow these students. To replace this level of funding would require an 11- to 12-mil levy. However, the district has recently received the feedback from its community and exit surveys on this front and plans to compile this information into some “action plans” for going forward. There were 200 responses to the community surveys and 33 responses to the edit interviews.
Also as part of a concerted campaign to interact with the community at large about the good things going on in the district, the administration was happy to pay tributes to the efforts of teacher Erika Orians. Orians has worked with the junior high student council to interact with the community via social media. She and her crew of motivated students have worked on a Facebook page to reach out to the community about student activities. This Facebook page has already reached more than 800 people and has proven quite popular with the kids themselves. It is a great platform to promote community and school pride.
“It’s amazing,” Orians said, and commented that this is, “by far the best group I’ve ever worked with.”
The students honored were Macy Hillman, Dalton Kent, Andrew Mee, Jackson Moody, Tyler Rittenhour, Alexis Schifer, and Jeramiah Skelton.
Chris Stone brought before the board another form of community outreach, a new district mobile alert app system. This app allows people to sign up for a whole host of alerts, from very basic to very detailed. Participants have a great deal of selection as to how many alerts they receive, from something as basic as delay/cancellation notifications all the way to receive individual sports team news. This app also works with non-smart phones by providing text and email updates.
Superintendent Kevin Kimmel reported to the board about a “very powerful day.” The day in question was the pilot kick-off of the Workforce Awareness for Graduates and Educators (WAGE) tour of the Bucyrus Industrial Park.
Visiting all four businesses, students and teachers got some real world feedback on the needs and opportunities of manufacturing careers. This served the dual purpose of offering insight to the students about real workforce expectations and showing that there are opportunities right here in Bucyrus.
In discussion items the board spoke of moving ahead with the Bucyrus PD about including a student resource officer. The PD has availed itself of grant funds that would make this program no cost to the district.
While it was a discussion item only and not up for official action, board member Adam Stone raised some concerns about the specifics of just such a post: What would this do to 
students’ rights to due process? Kimmel stated he would pass this along to the district’s attorney for consideration.
The board was excited to accept a $2,000 donation from the Bucyrus Elks toward the school backpack program. Dave Smith of the Elks presented a check in this amount to Kimmel.