The 2022-23 Budget, in the amount of $93,893,354 includes a 0% increase to the tax levy.

The proposed budget addresses three essential components:

¯ Learning Loss due to the pandemic,

¯ Increasing mental health support needs among our student population and,

Lincoln Elementary School paraprofessional, Heidi Stenander, works on ELA skills with kindergartners.

¯ Keeping the tax levy increase at 0% while maintaining the ability to protect our taxpayers in this manner into the future.

This budget will add critical positions that will directly help our students’ and families’ academic and mental health needs that arose as a result of the COVID pandemic over the last two years.

Some of the highlights of the proposed budget that directly impact these goals include: hiring five reading teachers, five JHS teachers, five AIS teachers, 15 additional classroom support paraprofessionals, three social workers, five school counselors, two community navigators as well as creating five teacher on special assignment positions to assist with student support.

The community navigator program has proven to be a successful model for connecting with families and bridging the gap between our community and our school. The addition of two more navigators allows for more work to be done in support of families and students who are struggling academically and socially with school.

Our student mental health concerns have been worsened significantly by the pandemic. The number of calls for mental health support has increased dramatically, putting a great strain on our existing support systems, both within and outside of the school district. With the addition of paraprofessionals, social workers and school psychologists, we can better address these needs in school, and begin to assist with family and community concerns in this area as well.

In the area of academics, it is common knowledge that the pandemic has significantly impacted student learning across the last two years.

In order to bring our students back to the levels of learning that they need in order to be successful, we must provide them with reading support, academic intervention support and behavioral support so that they can find success in their classrooms.

Like your home when you save for a new roof, or you need to put new tires on your car, the district also needs to save for potential capital projects, maintenance issues or new transportation for our students. With voter approval and support, the district will be able to continue to provide for equipment, vehicles and essential maintenance of our facilities into the future without having to turn to the local taxpayers to address these costs.

We can do this by creating a capital reserve fund and an equipment, vehicle & maintenance reserve fund. These funds will allow us to “smooth out” any future challenges to state education funding, and to do so without impact to our local taxpayers.

Finally, we will be asking you to vote for the acquisition of land across from the high school that we utilize for student, staff and community parking.

Love Elementary School English as a New Language teacher, Liz Kinderman, helps kindergartner Jeremias Garcia Santos during class.

As the land area surrounding the high school is currently fully utilized, when the opportunity arose to acquire the land that the parking lot occupies, it presented an opportunity to own the land and continue our ability to safely allow for parking nearby our school for staff, students, and community members who come to our academic, musical and sporting events.

Finally, two Board of Education seats are open for election. There are two candidates on the ballot, Patrick Slagle and Joseph Pawelski. Please review the other article on this page for more information on the candidates.

We value our community’s input and support. I am proud to work for a community that has been so supportive of our children – our future citizens. I thank you in advance for taking the time to vote on Tuesday, May 17th from noon to 9 p.m. at Lincoln Elementary School, Jefferson Middle School and Washington Middle School.