Great Bend USD 428 will receive a $42,546 grant to upgrade its security system, Assistant Superintendent John Popp told the school board this week. The district must match the State Board of Education Safe and Secure Schools Grant.
The grant is roughly equal to $15.10 per student, based on the district’s full-time enrollment.
“We plan to use the money for updating our camera system in our buildings,” Popp said. “It will not cover all the buildings, but we will do our best to stretch dollars as far as we can. We will match the funds from our Capital Outlay budget to help purchase the cameras, wiring and network switches.”
Panther Boosters gift
These and other grants and contributions were approved at the Monday, Sept. 11, Board of Education meeting. Among the donations was $8,000 from the Panther Booster Club to the GBHS activities department for the purchase of two 55-inch digital touchscreens.
Activities Director Matt Westerhaus said one screen will go in the Jack Kilby Commons at the high school and the other will be in the Panther Activity Center (PAC).
These interactive touchscreens will allow the school to display all the GBHS Hall of Fame members, as well as champions, yearbooks and more. “Anything and everything that we want to celebrate (will be accessible) in a digital form,” he said Wednesday, speaking at the Great Bend Kiwanis Club meeting.
Accessing the digital world allows GBHS to share much more than is allowed in the limited space of the trophy cases, he noted.
“You don’t just have to visit Great Bend High School to see everything that’s on that touchscreen,” Westerhaus said. In the future, “You’ll be able to visit our website and see everything on that touchscreen, via computer or phone.”
He hopes that eventually the digital content will be expanded to include past yearbooks. “So if you want to see the Class of ’06 yearbook, you should be able to go online and see what happened in 1906 or 2006.”
More donations
Other grants and contributions approved on Monday were:
• $500 from the Central Kansas Library System to be equally distributed among USD 428 libraries
• $250 to GBHS football (twice) and $250 to the GBHS band trip, all from Great Bend Alive, for students’ set-up and tear-down of GB Alive!
• $100 from GB Economic Development to the GBHS band trip, for students’ set-up and tear-down of GB Alive!
• $450 from Chris and Andrea Jeska to the GBHS band trip (donation for tree removal)
• $500 from Marmie Chevrolet GMC for Panther Card top sellers
• 1,000 from Hoegemeyer Hybrids Inc. to GBHS concessions for popcorn sponsorship
• Casey’s Reward incentives: $1.60 to GBMS and $20.40 to Jefferson Elementary
• Ohiopyle Prints incentives: $10.44 to GBHS Athletics
• Strawbridge Studios Spring Commission: $147.16 to Little Panthers Preschool and $138.66 to Lincoln Elementary
Enrollment holds steady
Popp gave an update on enrollment, which was 2,849 on Sept. 1, “within five students of where we were last year” (2,844 on Sept. 20, 2022). Enrollment has been fairly consistent for several years, he said.
Exceeding the RNR
No one from the public appeared at the school’s budget hearing or Revenue Neutral Rate hearing on Monday, but Popp did provide some information.
The Kansas school funding formula mixes state dollars with local property taxes. All school districts in Kansas level a 20-mill tax toward the general fund. This will raise $3.26 million in local taxes compared to the $2.92 million raised by 20 mills last year. The revenue-neutral tax rate (that is, the rate that would raise about $2.92 million), would be 17.650.
Adding in all of the funds, the estimated tax rate will be 42.159, about 0.6 mills higher than last year’s 41.124 mills. Each mill raises about $172,000. By exceeding the Revenue Neutral Rate, the district will receive about $810,624 more than last year. Popp noted that this year’s increase in property insurance and health insurance will “eat up” that increase. “We have to generate more dollars just to keep up.”
