CARTHAGE, Mo. —
The Carthage School District will hire more teachers, and teachers will get a salary hike, under a preliminary budget endorsed Monday night by the Carthage School Board.
Board members approved a proposed budget that sets spending at $42.7 million for the fiscal year that starts July 1. That’s an increase of $2.9 million, or 7.2 percent, over spending estimated in the current year’s budget.
The plan calls for filling 13 more teaching positions, including literacy coaches, and hiring a second assistant principal at the high school.
“We’ve been holding off on that, but we’re over 1,200 kids in the high school, and we decided we couldn’t wait any longer,” Superintendent Blaine Henningsen said Tuesday.
While spending is up, Henningsen noted that district revenues also are budgeted to increase, by more than $1 million to a total of nearly $41.9 million, based on projections from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education that state money to schools “will increase a little next year.”
He said the district does not have a precise estimate on state funding, or on what it will receive in local revenues, because county property valuations are yet to be set.
Henningsen said the district expects to start the fiscal year with a fund balance of $16.5 million, which is estimated to drop to nearly $15.7 million at the end of the fiscal year.
“The district had built up its reserves, and the plan was to spend that down,” he said. “But when the economy went south, we started slowing down our spending wherever we could.”
In other business, the board heard a report from the district’s Hispanic Advisory Committee, including recommendations aimed at improving education for Hispanic students.
The recommendations came from a series of meetings earlier in the year that involved teachers, administrators, Hispanic students and parents, and an adviser who works with the district, said Deborah Swarens, assistant superintendent for instruction and a member of the panel.
Recommendations call for the district to consider recruiting more bilingual teachers, administrators and support staff members; starting Spanish instruction in the elementary schools; increasing multicultural activities; expanding adult English language learner classes; and adopting a Carthage school uniform.
Handbooks
THE CARTHAGE SCHOOL BOARD on Monday discussed student handbooks to be used in junior high, high school and adult education programs next year.
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