The next meeting of the Minooka CCSD 201 Finance Committee will be Thursday, October 18, 2012. The Finance Committee meeting starts at 6:00 p.m. in
the board room (the old library) at the Minooka Primary Center located
at 305 Church Street in Minooka. Finance Committee meetings are open to
the public, so everyone is welcome to attend. The Finance Committee will be discussing a
new deficit reduction plan to further address our operating deficit. So, if you want your voice heard during the process, you may want to attend the Finance Committee meeting. Of course, you could wait until a future board meeting when the deficit reduction plan is voted on, but at that point it might be too late to have much of an impact.
As an informational reminder, here is a link to the Minooka CCSD 201 budget for fiscal year 2012-2013, as well as a link to a previous post regarding the financial projections which were presented to the Finance Committee this past January. We now know that the EAV (the property value upon which property taxes are based) in the district fell by roughly 8% in 2011, whereas the projections had assumed that the EAV would be stable. Therefore, updated projections would reflect a bleaker local revenue picture than previously projected.
I would love for my voice to be heard at that meeting, unfortunately, due to the nature of my job, it's not a good idea to voice my opinions in a public setting. However, under the protection of internet anonymity, I feel comfortable asking questions like: Wouldn't having district administrators pay for their own TRS and insurance (just like every other district employee) save a bunch of money? By my calculations, for the 13 administrators in the district, that would save more than $120,000 a year (and of course that will continue to go up as the district hands out 6% raises). No, that's not 3 million, but 120 grand is nothing to laugh at. I know that every job has its perks, but not if their company can't afford them. I worked at a fast food restaurant in college, and when I started there, the owner gave free meals to employees on break. A few years later, the restaurant wasn't doing as well, so the owner changed that perk to be 50% off your food and free drinks. The employees understood and were grateful that their jobs or hours weren't cut instead. In a school setting, I would think that having admin pay for their benefits just like everyone else would be an easier pill to swallow than cutting classroom teachers, librarians, fine arts programs, or athletics.
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