Felmlee asks school board for $521,856 in new salaries

SoBoCo Superintendent Chris Felmlee presented the district’s school board with a preliminary budget Monday evening that reflected a fast-growing district.

Felmlee’s preliminary budget asks for 10.5 new teaching positions at a cost of an estimated $521,856 in salaries and benefits. “For the sake of budgeting, we will use an estimated cost for full-time employment of $41,064, which includes salary, retirement health insurance and Medicare,” Felmlee told the board in his Budget Priorities memo.

School board President George Carney asked board members to check their calendars for their availability for a work session later this month. “There are some new sources of revenue we will get as we continue to grow,” Felmlee said Tuesday.

“We are adding funding from the state as we continue to grow in student population.” Felmlee said the district was changing at “an alarming rate annually” and that the new positions are based on lowering the current student-teacher ratios – which Southern Boone has prided itself on in the past.

Felmlee told the board that the student-teacher ratio in some K-5 classes had risen above the desired levels set by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

“We are in a ‘darned if you do, darned if you don’t’ situation,” Felmlee said, explaining that families move to the district to take advantage of low classroom sizes and good education SoBoCo brags about. “We need to get back to smaller class sizes, which are better ratios for performance,” Felmlee said.

While Felmlee emphasized that the preliminary budget was “a lot of tea leaf reading” and much could change in the coming months. “I am hoping the governor does not surprise us,” Felmlee said. “I hope money is not taken away due to Charter Schools or other funds critical to our program.” The proposed new positions include a Special Education process coordinator and two additional speech language pathologists.

At the Primary and Elementary Schools, a new teacher would be hired for first, second and fifth grades as well as remedial math teachers at both buildings. A Learning Garden is also included in the plan. At the Middle School, Felmlee is requesting a half-time PE teacher and a Spanish teacher (to be split with the high school) and the high school would have a full time French teacher as well as a full time librarian. Felmlee said the school board would have to make some choices about the district’s fund balance, which usually winds up with a 18-20% fund to carry over to the next year. He also said current teacher contracts would receive $500 added to the base of the contract as they had last year. “That makes us competitive with schools around us,” Felmlee said, “along with a good benefits package.”