The Salem Grade School Board learned the district is now facing a $1,407,000 deficit for the current school year. That’s up from the $1,116,000 deficit at the start of the school year.
Superintendent Dr. Leslie Foppe says the district faced a number of cost increases.
“For us in the ed fund, our Menta and Bridges students, so students that we send there, have a tuition rate that is higher than what we anticipated,” Foppe said. “Whenever we do budget for that, we go off of what we had the year before, but our numbers have increased and their amount has increased as well. We’ve had performance growth amounts increased. We also added the tech loan, so that was a new item that we had to put in for expenditures, and our electric bill has been much higher this year.”
Foppe says the operations and maintenance portion of the budget is up due to insurance costs and supply expenses. She reports transportation costs will also be higher than budgeted. There are past surplus funds to cover the deficit.
Foppe will continue to refine the budget before a hearing is held at six pm on June 25th before the start of the next school board meeting.
The district will be looking for a new Franklin Park assistant principal following the resignation of Ben Teriet. Two teachers have been involuntary transferred. Megan Lenzini will move to kindergarten and Elizabeth Williams to 7th grade science. The board accepted the resignation of girls’ assistant track coach Kristen Parrett and Denise McCormick as head scholar bowl coach. Robin Hartwig and Rebecca Frisby submitted letters to retire after the 2028/2029 school year.
The two Salem Elementary Teacher Association Scholarship winners were announced. Kinsey Jarrett and Ruthie Hays will each receive $500 scholarships to pursue a career in teaching. Jarrett will be attending Ozark Christian College and Ruthie Hays Greenville University.
