Sandy Cullen summarized last evening’s Madison School Board meeting where:
- Board members approved an administrative staff hiring freeze (5-2 with Bill Keys and Juan Jose Lopez voting against it)
- Voted to use 200K in excess district insurance funds for elementary art, music and gym class sizes at 15 students in SAGE schools. (4-3 with Bill Keys, Juan Jose Lopez and Johnny Winston, Jr. voting against it)
- Adopted the 2005-2006 budget 5-2 with Ruth Robarts and Shwaw Vang opposed
My only correction Jim to your post would be on point #2. Rather than stating in fact the 200K was “in excess district insurance funds”, the Cullen article states correctly:
…that ESTIMATED insurance costs COULD be about $240,000 less than the amount budgeted. But he and Rainwater cautioned against allocating those funds for other programs UNTIL THE ACTUAL FIGURES WERE KNOWN.
Keys was the lone vote against the additional spending.
Given the unknown of our state budget I do hope this vote is re-visited should we have to cut an additional $3.1M