There is no money left in this year’s school district budget to hire additional maintenance staff, the board of education learned.
Back in April, the board had decided that if there was to be a surplus at year end, that staff report out in the month of September on “the suitability of amending the budget to provide additional custodial time in the 2015/16 school year and to provide one additional FTE to the Maintenance Operations Department.”
In his report prepared for the Oct. 6 meeting, district secretary treasurer Bob Harper said, “while the district had an unrestricted surplus at the end of June 2015 of $991,126, the increase in enrolment this September has meant we have hired nine additional teachers at a cost of some $882,000 in order to provide for these students.
“Additionally, we learned that we have an unexpected $244,000 expenditure in 2015/16 for our share of the Next Generation Network costss.”
“Quite bluntly put, these two cost pressures mean the district cannot afford to hire additional staffing in maintenance/operations in the 2015/16 year.”