Mt. Pleasant school board approves FY22 budget

The 2022 fiscal year budget of $36,514,751 was approved at the school board meeting last week.

Funding is awarded based on enrollment.

The 2022 budget shows an increase for per pupil funding by 2.4% to $7,227.

Property tax valuation for 2022 is set to increase by 2.52%.

Residential rollback increases to 56.4094%, commercial stays at 90% and farmland increases to 84.0305%

The full budget is available on the school board website.

A bill for paraprofessionals to retain the ability to substitute teach has been approved by the Iowa House and Senate.

Superintendent John Henriksen commented on the newly passed transparency bill.

“We don’t have any problem with sharing our curriculum to the public at all,” said Henriksen.

“We have zero problem with that at all. We just need some additional understanding on the stuff that is not in canvas,” said Director of Instruction Katie Gavin. “We have to be careful of copyrights before we open everything.”

In anticipation of going over the 2022 fiscal year budget there will be a meeting held May 9 at 6:15 to make official amendment.

Student registration fees are set to increase by $10 for the standard rates and by $5 for the reduced rates.

It was recommended to add seam coating on the south side of the middle school costing $39,000.

A proposal was made for the middle school roof drain repair including the addition of the seam coating.

The tuck point repair is set to take $60,000 and three and a half years.

The middle and high school parking lot striping project at $4,500 was approved.

The project to extend Van Allen Elementary’s drive way ran into problems with city codes.

The proposed project would have put the drop-off and pickup lanes on public property instead of on private.

“How do we get those pickup and drop-off cars off of Cherry?” Henriksen asked.

Resolution for Van Allen’s driveway project was not met, but solutions will continue to be explored.

Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com