Budget trimmed slightly at USD 398 years ago
A special meeting Aug. 22 for USD 398 school board members resulted in the board approving a budget for 2007 slightly below what was published.
During the regularly scheduled meeting Aug. 14, the board of education accepted a 5.133 mill hike in the budget, but asked superintendent Tom Alstrom to continue to work on trimming the budget before their final acceptance on Aug. 22.
Alstrom was able to cut an additional 0.865 mills from the budget which was accepted at the special meeting.
Alstrom said that after the dust cleared in the school finance wrangling in Topeka, the Peabody-Burns schools ended up with one $1.50 more in state aid than they received last year. The class of 2006 also was a larger-than-usual class and the incoming kindergarten group is far short of matching those numbers.
"The official head count for all districts comes on Sept. 20," said Alstrom. "Of course we don't know yet what our numbers will be. We were above our projections at the beginning, but we are supposed to lose several students this week and that will affect our finances."
Action by the school board to accept the budget as amended was approved 5-0, with Duke Eldridge and Rhonda Loucks absent.
