The Big Sandy Mountaineer -

On Tuesday, March 22nd the Board of Trustees spent time at the regularly scheduled meeting reviewing the preliminary budget for the 2016-17 school year. Next year’s budget is unique as it marks the first year that Big Sandy Schools will be operating as one K-12 district instead of a separate high school and elementary district. This required change will help make the financial management of the district more efficient as we will only have to deal with one budget instead of two.

Overall Big Sandy School’s general fund budget will go up slightly to $1,780,000 which is up $15,000 from the current year. Other components of the budget such as transportation, retirement, bus depreciation will be finalized in August. This year we will not be asking the voters for additional taxes for the school to operate as we feel our budget is adequate at this time. Like most schools 80% of our general fund budget is utilized for salaries and benefits. That doesn’t give us a lot of extra money to deal with the other bills. The single biggest unknown factor for us is the cost of utilities. When we have easy winters like this past one our utilities bills are much smaller, but a long cold winter can really be tough on a school budget just like it is in our own personal budgets and that is difficult to plan for. But overall things are looking good as far as the school budget for next year and we are pleased that we do not have to ask our taxpayers for additional funding at this time.

Two trustees’ positions were also up for election this year. Brad Weaver filed again for his position and Kurt Strutz chose not to file for reelection so, the trustees have the obligation to appoint a trustee to that position within 60 days after the term expires. There will be more information in the Mountaineer as the time approaches. May 3, 2016 is the school election day but Big Sandy Schools will not be having any election that day. We thank you for your continual support of the students of Big Sandy Schools. If you have any questions or concerns stop in my office anytime as the door is always open.