Q. When will the new taxes go into effect?

A. Late October or early November of 2019 will be the first time our tax payers will see an increase on their personal property statement.

Q. Would any of this money go towards a music program other than band? Or to improve the quality of your special education?

A. As of right now there are no direct plans for additional music programs beyond band or choir. Funding may go into those programs to allow for more competitions, additional opportunities, or equipment replacement as the budget allows. We would be curious if there is student interest in something we currently do not offer, and we would encourage additional feedback. While we do not have new funding earmarked for Special Education professional development we are already having discussions about how to improve our SPED program and professional growth for our teachers and our paraprofessionals.

Q. Would any of this money go towards getting a Spanish teacher into your school? Spanish is the second largest language and most colleges require it as a study. You also have bilingual children in your school that are trying to learn English and their current teachers can not understand any other form of communication including sign language.

A. Sherwood had posted to recruit a Spanish teacher for a number of years and had no applicants. With our current financial standing we could not add another teacher at this time; however, we are working on ideas to provide opportunities for Spanish opportunities for the 2019-20 school year through some alternative methods or by trying some creative ideas. We should note that colleges and universities may require two (2) years of a foreign language, not necessarily Spanish. They do accept students who do not meet this criteria, but students may be provisionally accepted or may be required to take certain classes to begin their post-secondary education. There are a number of rural schools in the state that offer no foreign language and those students are still accepted into these colleges and universities. Please reach out to us with which students are struggling to understand teachers and we will work to address this.

Q. Specifically, what would any of this money do to help the education of our children?

A. Additional funding is to help us retain the quality teachers and staff we have and not have them lured away to other districts simply for a pay raise. We want to make sure we can hold onto the best. We also want to be competitive to continue to recruit high quality teachers and staff. Additionally, we also want to offer new STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) classes that make learning more hands on and based on projects and problem solving strategies. We want to take those instructional strategies we would pick up through new STEM courses and adapt them to be used in other courses as well. This funding would ensure we can keep up a continual rotation of instructional technology for our students to use. Whether it is Chromebooks, tablets, robotics, or coding, we want to have the tools to provide a quality education that incorporates the tools students will need now and in the future. Additionally, if the heating and cooling units go out in classrooms it makes it difficult for students to focus on learning if they are too cold or too hot. With 38 of our 81 systems being dated 2001 or older we will be in a spot very soon where a lot of units will need to be replaced.

Q. Didn’t the school just recently get a large amount of money to improve the school? Wouldn’t some of that budget have gone to “improving school safety “ or the AC units? It’s seems the money wasn’t appropriately distributed the first time and the verbiage of the way the money would be used towards education seems vague. That’s concerning to a family that is not going to be getting benefits for their children, but paying a lot more in taxes.

A. The school did receive a large amount of money in 2013 and 2016 through "no new tax" bond issues. Bond money can only be used for facilities, construction, land purchasing, and equipment purchases. Our request for increasing the operating levy is help with our annual expenses. We have not asked for any increased taxes for our operating expenses since 1995 and we haven't asked for an increase in taxes to pay for a bond issue since the 2001 construction project. The goal is to get to where we can have an annual budget that provides enough funding to maintain our building and equipment instead of requesting bond issues. Our brochure located here: https://sites.google.com/sherwoodk12.net/sherwood2019levy/2019-levy-brochure has additional information on how we can and cannot spend bond money and school financing requirements.

Please keep your questions coming!!