A working session will be held Dec. 7 by the Perry School Board at 5 p.m. in the Brady Library at PHS, and the agenda will feature one multi-faceted item: Setting priorities for the district’s three-year plan.
The PCSD currently faces a $650,000 deficit, but Superintendent Clark Wicks was quick to note that funds used for the capital improvements under consideration will not be “deficit spending.”
“The money we’re talking about comes from a completely different stream of funding, an entirely separate revenue source,” Wicks said. “These dollars are generated by both the statewide penny tax and by the PPEL (physical plant and equipment levy) that was recently passed by a public vote. It won’t add one dollar to our deficit, which is from the general fund — an entirely different stream of finances.”
While many matters will be discussed, Wicks said he thinks three items will likely receive the most attention, though he stressed they were in no particular order.
The first is funding a study to find out what changes, if any, are needed in the electrical systems at Perry Middle School.
“I think we’re going to find there’s going to be work that’s needed,” Wicks said. “It’s really quite simple — when the building was built, no one had any idea it would one day be filled with computers and all sorts of other technology drawing on our power needs. We need to find out, and the sooner the better, what we need to do to catch up and then be ahead of our needs.”
Also likely to receive considerable discussion is possibly switching to LED lighting in the schools.
“This won’t be cheap,” he admitted. “What we’re talking about here are environmental factors, which includes few replacement needs, and the amount of savings we know we are going to have if we make the switch.”
Wicks said the transition to LED will be phased in.
“I don’t foresee us going all-out at first,” he said, “and we will almost certainly do one building at a time. You would be amazed, if you think about, just how many light fixtures we are talking about, say, in the high school alone. It is something where we would definitely be looking at what the long-term savings would be.”
Another top item would be the replacement of a minivan or SUV for the district, an upcoming need Transportation Director Troy Griffith recently reported to the board. Planning ahead for a five-year and 10-year schedule for bus replacements will also be considered.
A wide variety of other issues will also be discussed, Wicks said, including carpet and painting work at elementary building, possible renovations to the work spaces used by the family and consumer science classes at the middle school and the two-step process of painting the varsity gym and then replacing the floor. The ongoing need for more space for the popular industrial technology classes is in the mix as well.
“We won’t ever run out of things needing to be done,” Wicks said with a smile. “That’s just the nature of running a school district. Buildings need fixing and updating. Vehicles have to be attended to. All sorts of items.”
He said the main goal of the board’s Dec. 7 meeting will be “trying to assign priorities for the next three years because we obviously can only do so much. The main thing the public needs to remember is that any dollar we spend on any of these items is not adding to the deficit. They are completely separate from each other.”
