SWL board seeks study for future classroom demands - Other Community News - Ohioans for Responsible Rural Development

The Pataskala Standard
Published October 27, 2011

By Charles A. Peterson

PATASKALA -- A superintendent's committee is to be appointed in the Southwest Licking School District to assess future enrollments and how soon new classroom space is needed.

In asking Superintendent Forest Yocum to make such an appointment, however, Board of Education members, at their regular meeting last week acknowledged a potentially challenging public relations dilemma, should more space be needed.

Specifically, it's explaining how the district could spend money on portable classrooms at the three elementary schools to solve space shortages while classrooms sit empty at the just-closed kindergarten center in Etna.

"It's cost shifting," board member Donald Huber said, explaining that money from the district's Permanent Improvement levy would pay for the portables, not the financially strapped general fund.

But he and others pointed out that the Kindergarten Center, where there are now nine unused classrooms and a gymnasium, was closed because it saved some $200,000 in personnel costs -- money that comes out of the general fund, not the Permanent Improvement fund, which is used for capital expenditures only.

"We're shifting funds from operating funds to permanent improvement funds," Huber said. "We have a decent amount of money for capital improvements."

"We're going to have to explain this over and over to the public," Huber said.

Read the full story on The Pataskala Standard website.