MIDDLETON, Idaho — Will the third time be a charm?
Middleton School District trustees hope so. They voted 3-0 at their meeting Monday to ask patrons, on August 25, to approve a two-year $1.5 million supplemental levy.
This comes less than a month after voters shot down the same levy. That request failed by four percentage points, or about 150 votes.
Middleton, like other school districts around the state, was forced to cut its 2019-20 budget by 1 percent and another 5 percent for fiscal year 2020-21. The state ordered holdbacks were prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Our hands are tied by the state in certain areas with the holdbacks," Trustee Derek Moore said. "Even if we have the levy, we are still cutting costs. The levy helps us survive. What worries me more is, can we come out of it."
Trustees agreed it would be very difficult to cut another $1 million from the 2020-21 budget. The district is still looking at other areas to cut expenses.
The district, which recently adopted a four-day school week, has been unable to pass any funding requests in recent years. The district announced on June 2, that Superintendent Sherawn Reberry had resigned after just 10 months on the job.
Then on June 11, two school board members, Briggs Miller and Marianne Blackwell, announced their resignations.
"But, I don't know that it's fair to have three board members make the decision not to give the district a chance to sell this for the whole summer with actual numbers (available now,)" said Board Chairman Kirk Adams.
"I'm hopeful that the transparency and the true numbers that we can attach to this budget will help explain some of the reasons why we need this money, but I also hope that we can have discussion about long-term funding as a board and as a district and even with our local governments as to this is an ongoing problem, and we need to come with come up with a better solution than continually having to ask our taxpayers to help," Trustee Aleisha McConkie said.
The board will meet on July 14 to review the Middleton School District plan for reopening schools under the ongoing threat of COVID-19.
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