Boyceville school board hears audit report, sets open enrollment numbers for next year
PROTECTED CONTENT
If you’re a current subscriber, log in below. If you would like to subscribe, please click the subscribe tab above.
Username and Password Help
Please enter your email and we will send you a password reset link.
BOYCEVILLE — With just three of its five members in attendance, the Boyceville Community School District Board of Eduction met for its regular monthly session Wednesday, January 11 in the high school/middle school IMC.
Board president Tim Sempf, treasurer Erik Evenson and member Amber Carlsrud were in attendance to hear the audit report from the previous school year, approve the open enrollment space availability for next school year and accept a retirement request from a member of the teaching staff.
Board members Jeremy Mittlestadt and Steve Olson were unable to attend.
Also unable to attend the meeting in person due to the icy conditions that had closed several area schools earlier that day including Boyceville was Joan Betz of Baker Tilly, the district’s financial auditor.
Instead, Betz appeared via Zoom to give a brief overview of Boyceville’s audited 2021-22 financial report.
Betz started by saying that the district’s audit of last year’s finances was a “clean report” which is the highest level that can be obtained.
The report showed that the district’s unassigned general fund balance of $2,595,913 in 2021-22 was 28.86 percent of the general fund expenditures of $8,993,313 which represented a decrease from 2020-21 when the percentage was 33.52 percent. According to Betz, that percent was still well above the recommended minimum of 17 percent. Over the past five fiscal years, the district’s unassigned funds as a percentage of general fund expenditures has ranged from a high of nearly 36 percent in 2017-18 to just under 29 percent this past year.
Boyceville realized an increase in federal dollars according to Betz who noted that the audit showed state and federal awards to the district of $1.5 million in 2020-21 with nearly a half million of those funds going into food service when lunches were offered free to all students due to COVID-19.
Finally, Betz told the board that the Boyceville Community School District’s debt service to total expenditures is “decreasing nicely”. The 2020-21 debt service percentage was 9.45 well below the bond rating agency’s recommended maximum of 20 percent.
Under its action items, the board approved the 2023-24 open enrollment space availability as presented by superintendent Nick Kaiser who reported that all grade levels with the exception of special education services has available spaces to accommodate students that would like to open enroll into the district next school year.
In the Boyceville district, “regular class” space availability ranges from a single opening in next year’s first grade to 26 open slots in sixth grade. In all, there are seven grade levels that have double-digit openings including 22 in the freshman class, 21 for fourth grade, 19 are available in next year’s senior class, 18 in the junior class, 13 in seventh grade and 11 slots each in third and fifth grades.
Boyceville is showing a projected enrollment of 704 students for the 2023-24 school year.
Kaiser’s report noted that the availability numbers for special education open enrollment are determined by a district’s current special education caseloads and DPI guidance of recommended caseload numbers. Boyceville’s current special education caseload numbers meet or exceed state recommendations. The state average for the number of students receiving special education services is 14 percent. Currently, 15.4 percent of Boyceville’s student population currently receive some form of special education services. Therefore, Kaiser recommended those services be closed to those outside the district boundaries which the board concurred with and approved.
The board also accepted the retirement request of special education teacher Jeffrey Hoff which will take effect at the conclusion of the current school year. Hoff has been employed full time by the district for the past 24 years. In his retirement letter to the board and Superintendent Kaiser, Hoff, a lifelong resident of the Boyceville area, thanked them for the opportunity to spend much of his teaching career in the same school district that he once attended.
In the administrative reports portion of the agenda, Tiffany Creek Elementary principal DeeAnn Thompson presented a December snapshot of the data collected and compiled by the Positive Behavioral Interventions Systems or PBIS team. Using the data, elementary guidance counselor Taylor Pitt put together a one-page graphic on Office Discipline Referrals or ODRS. The data page showed that the total number of ODRS is down by over one hundred from December of 2021. It also noted the top four behavior concerns are disrespect, physical aggression, defiance and disruption with most offenses occurring in the classroom between 9 and 10 a.m.
The report also showed that the top behavior modification strategies being used by staff were conferences with students, detention and loss of privileges.
90 percent of TCE students have zero or one ODR while 83 percent have no ODRS.
