Latino and parent liaison posts proposed for reinstatement
BY JEAN JACQUES BOHL
Blaine County School District Superintendent GwenCarol Holmes and Business Manager Mike Chatterton have introduced an amended compromise budget for Fiscal Year 2017 that was scheduled for consideration by the district board of trustees at its monthly meeting Tuesday evening.
The new budget proposal reinstates funding for the district’s Latino Outreach Liaison at $64,886; provides for a half-time Special Services Parent Liaison at $36,664; and establishes $11,750 in partial funding to Mountain Rides Transportation Authority to provide reduced-cost bus passes to students on the Mountain Rides Valley Route, which runs between the north and south Wood River Valley.
Mountain Rides Executive Director Jason Miller said that with partial funding reinstated, the cost for a student bus pass during the nine-month school year would be about $40 per student. In comparison, a regular Mountain Rides six-month bus pass costs $270.
Elimination of the Latino and parent liaison positions and the Mountain Rides subsidy was included in an earlier budget proposal presented to the school board by Holmes and Chatterton earlier this spring.
Elimination of the liaison posts and the Mountain Rides funding became controversial in May when Trustees Elizabeth Corker and Cami Bustos introduced an alternative budget that proposed restoring the liaison posts and continuing the Mountain Rides subsidy. Instead, Corker and Bustos proposed eliminating the district Communications Department and making reductions in administration salaries and benefits.
The Corker and Bustos proposal was followed by an online petition initiated by a Wood River Valley parent group, BCSD Students First, supporting the changes. By the beginning of this week, the petition had acquired about 300 signatures from district patrons.
The district intends for the coming fiscal year, which goes into effect on July 1, to cut $1.3 million in operating expenses in order to not further exhaust the district’s fund reserve.
Results of the school board’s consideration of the compromise budget were not available to The Weekly Sun by press deadline Tuesday.