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Hazelwood Outlines Area Tax Rate; Looks to Improve Summer School
By Jeremy Thomas
At a meeting that lasted just over an hour, the Hazelwood School District Board of Education heard several topics that were presented in front of a fairly sparse audience.
The last meeting was packed, as the board focused on the newly appointed superintendent Grayling Tobias and the future success they believe he will bring to the district.
This recent meeting mainly focused on updates of how area schools did in summer school attendance, along with an up to date Tax rate in the Florissant, Hazelwood and surrounding areas. Patron participation had a very positive and thankful nature to it at the meeting.
Assistant Supt. for Finance and Facilities Dwight Lindhorst provided the board with an in depth look at tax rates from around the area over the last few years, including municipal rates and the district’s rate. The presentation included flow charts and bar graphs representing residential real-estate, agricultural real-estate, commercial real-estate, and personal property. Also in the presentation he compared the total assessment evaluation for the district this year to last year, which featured a $10.6 million addition from 2011-2012.
Three assistant superintendents for learning including Crystal Reiter, Ty McNichols, and Steve Sandbothe all provided an update of how five area middle schools numbers turned out for summer school. They also talked about what things they did successfully, and things to improve on next year.
In their presentation they mentioned that over 1,500 students were enrolled in summer school classes, and of all the teachers instructing summer school classes, 85% of them were Hazelwood teachers. The 1,500 students is a slight decrease of about 600 students that were enrolled last year.
However, there was some controversial for some students, the students that only took one class did not receive transportation from the school they attended. The administration is looking for ways to improve on the current system so that all students may receive transportation to and from school no matter how many classes they are taking. Along with this the presentation also gave the audience and the board a sense of what worked at schools this summer and what did not.
They mentioned that learning activities as well as doing outdoor activities made summer school a little more fun. It seems to work really good as they mentioned that majority of students said they enjoyed summer classes. The thing they most want to improve on is the enrolment numbers, so the adminstrators are already planning ahead to next summer with principles of area schools to get the word out and have a better turnout than this year.
