(Audubon) The FY23 School Budget for Audubon has been approved.
On Monday night the school board approved the budget with a tax levy rate that is slightly higher at $12.26 per thousand dollars of valuation. The rise, according to Superintendent Eric Trager, is a result of increased enrollment. “We had over a 20 student increase. The school budget review committee gives us authority to spend money to educate those children, but then in order to get that money we need to levy taxes against our property tax payers. So that’s how we get the cash to educate those students. We will have a slight increase this year, but on the whole it’s a good problem to have because it’s all due to an increase in enrollment.”
The school calendar has also been approved. School will start August 23rd with a May 19th dismissal. Trager says the calendar is very similar to the current school year. “The big thing for us is we have a construction project that will start this summer and will be working through next summer. We want to make sure and can keep our school year as consolidated as we can while still giving people a little time for mental health breaks and things like that. We run a pretty tight calendar, but that’s just to lengthen the summer as much as we can for the construction.”
Trager says the purchase of an off-lease bus was approved which will save the district some money. “We will be buying a used bus which saves us about $30,000 over the cost of new. Our issue with our busses is typically they age out before we wear them out miles wise. We decided to start purchasing the busses off lease to save a little money on the front end and they will serve us for the same number of years without any problem.”
An HVAC Project for the Elementary School has been approved. Trager reports they are upgrading the control system and adding demand ventilation. The demand ventilation increases air quality and also qualifies the district for a rebate through MidAmerican Energy that will cover approximately 50% of the cost.
