By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
It is back in black for the Bucyrus City School District as the school system avoided red ink for the first time in four years.
During his report to the Bucyrus Board of Education, Treasurer Ryan Cook shared the news that the school finished $163,000 to the good in revenue to expenditures for the first time in four fiscal years. Cook noted that he remains cautiously optimistic that the school will see a nice increase in state funding, as much as 23 percent.
Cook explained that the plans are to continue to work diligently to save money while still being able to have a positive impact on the students.
“I think the plans are to continue on with the information that we provide the board of education and the decisions that positively impact the kids,” Cook said. “I know that being in the black this year we’ve accomplished all of those working with the administrative team and the Board of Education, just trying to be diligent monitoring revenues vs. expenses, providing accurate and timely information to the board, and as I said when I started up here turning over every stone to save money.”
“We do have significant headwinds moving forward, we got some capital expenditures that we face as a district, but we are aware of those, and we are just going to work diligently to continue to manage the tax payer dollars efficiently,” Cook continued.
Bucyrus improved on some of the spring OGT scores, but faltered in a few other areas according to Director of Curriculum and Instruction Matt Henderson’s report. Henderson noted that the school saw improvements in the math section of the sophomore OGT’s with 82.6 percent passing the assessment test, up from 79 percent last year.
Reading, while down a point, still received passing assessment with 85 percent of the students passing. Henderson noted that students’ scores fell back in writing and social studies portions of the tests, however the numbers on the OGT tests are not yet official and a few factors could raise the numbers before the scores are officially released.
Henderson also added that all 11th and 12th grade students hit the indicators needed.
Henderson also announced that the school would be going away with the PARCC assessment for students, and be transitioning to the AIR tests in the coming year.
Among items approved included the transfer of John Massara from Secondary Assistant Principal to Director of Student Services. Felecia Ervin’s resignation as the Career Exploration teacher was approved and she was named the district’s new EMIS Coordinator.
The Bucyrus Board of Education will hold a special meeting at 4:30 on Aug. 11 in the Secondary School library. After business is conducted the Board of Education will hold their annual building walkthroughs.