Supt. Mumm discusses outlook for future projects
Giltner School Board members approved a budget Monday for the 2023-2024 fiscal year following a presentation by Supt. Nick Mumm.
The tax asking was decreased by 6 percent from last year’s rate. The approved rate is 82.004 cents per $100 of valuation, a decrease of 3 percent from last year.
The combined property tax request went up from $2.95 million last year to $3.13 million.
Throughout the presentation, Mumm stated that there has been a positive impact to the projects that were set into motion by last year’s budget. The first major change he commented on was the partial conversion of the bus barn into an ag classroom.
“It’s up and running, which is great,” Mumm stated. “The kids love it and the teacher loves that we’ve shown it off as much as we possibly can.”
In addition to the ag classroom was the completion of the drainage and concrete work near the high school gymnasium and parking lots.
“It was quite a process,” he commented, “but I will say that the way it is now and how it looks when it does rain, like last night, it’s really awesome.”
The final addition planned from the last year’s budget included security installations for the entryway around the school.
“The school safety side of things, that honestly is going to be at the top of our minds,” the superintendent emphasized.
Mumm explained how the updated security system allowed him and other staff to receive notifications when any of the entryway doors has been opened for a certain period of time.
“I probably got somewhere up to 100 phone calls from the monitoring system,” Mumm reported, “which is to calculate how often you have the door open. We’re going to have a teacher meeting on Friday (in which) we’re actually going to have some conversation be held.”
Mumm said the situation has improved and thanked the board for having the system installed. Future projects in the works include construction of a new bus barn.
“A bus barn is in the need down the road,” Mumm stated. “Whatever that looks like and where, we’re setting ourselves up to be able to do that type of future project, wherever that may be and if and when that does happen.”
Mumm addressed the progress made in receiving state funding for current and future students at Giltner Public Schools.
“We never got state funding before,” he explained. “This is the first year where we got $333,000 in state funding foundation aid. It’s a down-payment on students at $1,500 a piece. You can look at it that it costs way more than $1,500 to educate them, but we’re getting a little state funding guaranteed this year, next year and then we’ll kind of see moving forward where we’re at.”
The superintendent brought to attention how option enrollment is a vital part to the shaping of this year’s budget.
“Option enroll is obviously a huge piece to Giltner,” he stated. “We get anywhere between eight to 900 thousand towards our budget every year that we can put in place because of option enroll, which is $10,400 every time a student comes in the door.”
From the discussion about the current plans for tax asking, Mumm established that there have been grants provided by the Department of Justice for future projects.
“We have two or three grants from the Department of Justice out there right now that hopefully we’ll have some more projects that we don’t get reimbursed for,” he stated. “Grants are something that you have to continue to fight for and are a lot of work, which is not always right in front of you. You have to search and you have to know where to search for them.”
The superintendent expressed a positive outlook when summarizing the ideals for the 2023-2024 school budget.
“I’m pretty proud of the 2023-2024 school budget,” he commented. “We have some unknowns in there, what could happen along the year, the surprises, so we make sure we protect ourselves every school year.”
When establishing the numbers for the current year, Mumm expressed his appreciation and thanks to the board and business manager, Chris Vaught, for their work in improving the district’s financial situation.
“There’s always work to do, but we’ve come a really long ways when it comes to our budgets and our different accounts,” Mumm said. “I’m really proud of where those are.”
He also commented that all of the projects both past and present would not have been possible without the support of the Giltner Public School Foundation and those involved in seeing these changes become a reality.
“I would say 90 percent of that was paid by the Giltner Public School Foundation,” Mumm stated, “which obviously helped our budget in the past and our budget currently as well. So that’s the big thanks to all the money and the time that they put into the school foundation.”
Mumm concluded his presentation by saying Giltner has great staff and great people who are very supportive.
In other action, Giltner School Board members:
* approved on ALICAP invoice of $71,059;
* approved to set in motion plans to contract with a financial advisor for the district to deal with bond issues.