By Tracy Ouellette
SLN Staff
With the state budget and school funding still up in the air, the East Troy School Board voted on July 17 to hire an additional fourth-grade teacher for Prairie View Elementary School for the 2017-18 school year.
The position had been part of the budget cuts earlier in the year, necessary to balance the budget, but the board had requested the line item be looked at again when there was a little more information about education funding in the state for the coming school year, because cutting the teaching position would put the class sizes in the fourth grade at about 29 kids in each class.
Prairie View Principal Mark Weerts told the board the hire would be for a one-year contract as the fourth-grade class was a “bubble class” and there were enough teachers at the fifth grade to handle the number of students who would move up that year.
Weerts said adding the teacher and lowering the class sizes in that grade would keep the district in line with other area districts as far a class sizes go.
“We’ve invested in great facilities and now it’s time to invest in staff,” he said.
District Business Manager Kathy Zwirgzdas told the board the “budget was changing daily” at this point, but with projecting a $100 per pupil aid from the state and rerunning all the numbers, she was able to find about $33,000 for the teacher’s salary.
“We have about half of what we need to fund the teacher,” she said.
When asked how they were going to come up with the other half, Zwirgzdas said she would cut the budget in other areas such as grounds and thought it might be enough, but cautioned they still hadn’t filled some of the open teaching positions at the high school, which might cost them more than projected.
Because the position is for one year, and a one-time expense, the board voted to approve the new teacher hire and if there wasn’t enough in the budget to fund the position, the money would be taken out of the fund balance.
Donation request
The School Board is considering donating a small parcel of land on Scout and Bluff roads in the Town of Troy to a local cemetery association.
The Little Prairie Cemetery Association approached the district about obtaining the property recently to preserve the site of one of the first schools in the tri-Troy area, which is also the burial ground of two children of the property’s owner Mr. Cox, who built the original school. Association member Nancy Manschot told the board members the children died of small pox and their graves were once marked by a picket fence on the property.
The cemetery association would like to clean up the property, mark the graves and have some type of historic plaque letting people know about the property’s history.
Manschot gave the board some of the history of the property and there was discussion by the board members about their options for donation.
Zwirgzdas was instructed to look into the board’s options on donating the property and possible interested parties, including the cemetery association. The lot is overgrown with brush and Zwirgzdas presented an estimate for its clean up to the board, should they wish to do that before donating the property. It would cost about $16,000 to clear the property.
