Dr. Sue Woltanski, Monroe County School Board member for District 5, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about what’s happening in the district.
The beginning of the school year went very well.
Woltanski said, “It’s been an amazing start to the school year. On the first day of school, Superintendent Tierney joined me in the Upper Keys schools to open those schools, and then he was down in the Lower Key schools on the second day. I can tell you, people were visibly touched. They couldn’t remember a superintendent coming on the first day of school before. It was really meaningful to be there with him and see that reaction, and all the schools were humming along. We went with Key Largo Principal Darren Pais. He took us to a first grade classroom where he said to the kids, what’s my job? What do I do? Trying to get them to say that he’s the principal. And one of the kids in there says, you read books. And I thought, oh, that is the greatest credit, because he does read books in those classrooms frequently, and it’s great when little kids think that that’s the grown ups main job. I heard from another teacher of middle school, seventh graders, they just said, I just love that it’s fun to learn in our schools. I mean, what could be a better way to start the school year? It’s great, and the sports are all back. It’s not all football, although it’s a lot football. Every team played home games on Friday. We also have golf and cross country and volleyball, all the teams played up in Coral Shores for a volleyball tournament on Thursday, that really opened the season. Everything’s going really well and really credit to the behind the scenes. It is the teachers as well, but it’s all the behind the scenes, the maintenance people, the custodial staff, that make the schools look so good and get everything ready to go. It’s a joint effort. They all get an A for effort as well as an A in the school district. Let me tell you what my aspiration is, that we’d be more like Denmark, where we have the happiest students in the world. If the kids enjoy coming to school, then the rest all follows.”
The school board meeting is coming up tomorrow.
Woltanski said, “We have another budget workshop at Coral Shores tomorrow, and then the trim notices will go out and then our final budget meeting will be on September 9 in Marathon. That process was a big challenge, because right at the beginning of budget season, there was a lot of question about what the state budget was going to be because it was delayed, and the funds from the federal government were paused for a period of time, although those have been released. So at least we know what’s going on now. We were able to combine administrative positions and our goal was to keep teachers in all the classrooms and programs intact, and the district staff has done a really good job of making sure that whatever budget cuts there are kids shouldn’t notice them for this year.”
The cost of school lunches has gone up.
Woltanski said it was “by a small amount, 10 or 15 cents, something like that. But that is a requirement of the federal government that with the rising cost of groceries, you cannot charge a full paying student less than the cost of the meal, and we had not raised our school lunch prices in about a decade. So if it was found that the cost of the lunch was less than what we were charging the full fare students, we could lose all the funding. So that had nothing to do with the budget cuts. That had to do with inflation and federal regulations for school lunch.”
The school board did adopt a tentative tax property rate of 7.3%, an increase over the previous year.
Woltanski said, “We have multiple workshops so that the public can come in and speak, and the operation part is something that the state tells us what we need to charge, although our capital funds, we are asking for a tiny increase in that because of the cost of inflation and construction. We expect that that point one increase will only be there for a year or two at the most while we pay off the Sugarloaf School, and once we get out from under those loans, we will be able to go back to the point five capital millage that we’ve had in the past. Temporary is what we want people to know.”
Affordable housing is still in discussions.
Woltanski said, “We will be talking about the ground lease for the Trumbo project and if people want to get an idea of what that may look like, there are some documents on the agenda. You can see what the ideas for what that space is going to look like. It actually looks really nice. We haven’t discussed this as a board yet, but there’s a potential of them being able to build, even if they can get the ROGOs an additional 63 units in that same space once the administration moves out of their building. So it will provide some really nice housing, and it’s in a great location. We’re hoping that will really ease some of the stress of moving here as a new teacher.”
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