Published: October 30, 2009 10:42 am      

Citizens voting on school levy during special election

MONTCALM — Mercer County Board of Education President Greg Prudich voiced one vital hope Tuesday night as the agenda of the Board’s meeting turned to the ballot for the five-year, $51 million excess school levy that will go before county citizens at a special election Jan. 30, 2010.

“Mercer County has been a very generous supporter of education for the past 60 years with these levies, and I hope this levy will cover the 65th year of that support,” he said, before the Board gave a unanimous final approval to the proposed levy notice and ballot. “We do appreciate the taxpayers taking this burden, and it’s extremely important, because it provides the school system with the money we need to function.”

Every five years, the MCBOE sets forth a similar excess levy request to cover essential school expenditures not sufficiently provided for by the maximum levies for current expenses authorized by the Code of West Virginia. While the categories of spending covered by the excess levy often change with each new levy election, the amount of money coming out of county taxpayers’ pockets to cover that spending typically stays relatively the same. According to Board member Gene Bailey, that is the case with the 2010-2014 excess levy, making the upcoming election more of a renewal of funding request than a plea for additional financial assistance.

“We’re not asking for more money,” he said. “We’re basically just asking for the same money the county has provided us with for the past several years.”

Although the excess school levy is typically voted upon in the primary election, the MCBOE recently requested that the County Commission approve a special levy election for Jan. 30, 2010. That date will allow the Board to meet requirements to turn their budget in to state department of education officials by March, months before next year’s May primaries.

If approved by county voters, the excess levy will provide the MCBOE with $10,237,401 in each of the next five years. Items that money would help to fund include the employment and retention of qualified teachers; the continued maintenance of a fair and adequate salary schedule for all service and auxiliary personnel; assistance in meeting utility and operational costs in all buildings; the maintenance and renovation of existing school facilities and school building construction; free textbooks, related workbooks and study material for students and necessary instructional supplies, materials, computers and equipment in all schools, among others.

The levy would take effect at the start of the next fiscal year, July 1, 2010. According to state policy, school levies need a simple majority to pass.

In other business Tuesday, the Board unanimously approved PikeView High School’s request to change their graduation date to June 5, 2010, at 4 p.m. They held off, however, on a planned vote regarding whether the school can change their graduation location to the Princeton Church of God, where the ceremony has taken place in each of the past two years. Regardless of where graduation ceremonies were held in previous years, the Board is required to vote each year on any location outside of school property. The PVHS graduation location motion will go before the Board at its next regularly scheduled meeting, since members did not think the motion was advertised properly prior to this week’s session.

Also this week, the Board voted unanimously to again submit the construction of a new Oakvale Elementary School as its annual West Virginia School Building Authority needs project. Each year, the SBA selects a limited number of construction projects statewide for which to provide funding. The selections are based mostly on need, and when it was submitted as Mercer County’s project last year, the new Oakvale school became the last request to be eliminated from the SBA’s list of choices before funding winners were announced.

The proposal for the new school includes plans to retain the existing gymnasium and the classrooms behind and beneath it, and to connect that area with the newly constructed facility, which would be located to the right of the current structure. Initial architectural estimates for the construction set the price at $6.9 million, toward which the county would provide $800,000 if the project were to be chosen by the SBA.

In other news, the Board gave notice to the achievements of several schools, faculty members and students during the regular “Board Recognizes” portion of their meeting. PVHS’s Chelsea Ward, a senior, was announced as a 2010 National Merit Commended Student. Select students nationwide receive the recognition based on “exceptional academic promise” shown in their qualifying test performance. Another PVHS student, freshman Darah Lilly, was also recognized for her acceptance into and completion of the prestigious West Virginia Governor’s School for Mathematics and Science, hosted last July by West Virginia University.

In addition, Princeton Middle School’s Tyler Davis Clark was presented as West Virginia’s only participant in the Summer 2009 Congressional Youth Leadership Conference, and Princeton Senior High School Band Director Julie Kade and Mercer County Schools’ Coordinator of Pupil Services Rick Ball were recognized for the success of the first “Southern Thunder” marching band invitational.

The MCBOE's next regular meeting will take place Nov. 10, at 6 p.m., in the Mercer County Technical Education Center's Seminar Center.

— Contact CharLy Markwart at cmarkwart@ptonline.net.