Unpaid food bills near $90,000

Food service bills are being left unpaid.

Jay School Board heard Monday from business manager Tarinna Morris that nearly $90,000 in student food services bills are currently unpaid.

The board also got an update on the school corporation’s projected schedule for its 2020 budget. Superintendent Jeremy Gulley discussed a list of his goals for the upcoming school year.

Morris told the board that the problem of unpaid food services bills has been growing in recent years. At the close of the 2016 school year, those bills totaled about $32,000. That number doubled by the end of the 2018 school year and currently sits at $88,563.

Broken down by students, 91 have negative food service balances of between $150 and $300, 61 between $300 and $500, 29 between $500 and $800, and three of more than $800.

Because Jay Schools participates in the federal school lunch program, those outstanding funds must be covered by the corporation if they are not collected. The issue was also noted in the school’s last audit, Morris said.

“It is a problem,” Gulley said. “It’s been called out by state auditors. We need to rethink our policies and practices. And that’s what we’re going to do.”

Morris and Gulley plan to present some potential solutions, including processes for collecting the outstanding funds and procedures for notifying families in a more timely manner so that such large balances do not build up, at the board’s next meeting. That process will include reviewing policies that other corporations have put in place to deal with similar problems.

Also Monday, Morris updated the board on the corporation’s 2020 budget process. The initial budget review and request for permission to advertise, which typically has come during the first of two August board meetings, will instead be held at the board’s Aug. 19 meeting. The budget will then be advertised beginning Aug. 21, with a public hearing scheduled for the Sept. 16 board meeting. The board plans to adopt its 2020 budget during its Oct. 21 meeting.

Gulley also updated board members Phil Ford, Mike Shannon, Donna Geesaman, Ron Laux, Krista Muhlenkamp, Chris Snow and Jason Phillips on “points of focus” he has laid out for the 2019-20 school year, which begins Friday. Those include preparing for the transition as buildings will be consolidated in 2020-21, expanding use of Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA) testing to gauge student growth, hiring a full-time school resource officer, improving wages while maintaining a positive cash flow, implementing e-learning, remodeling JCHS to accommodate middle school students and creating secure points of entry for all schools in the corporation.

He also noted that about one-third of students were registered this year using the corporation’s online platform.

In other business, the board:

•Approved the following: a new mental health needs assessment contract with Otis R. Bowen Center for Human Resources; bus driver contracts for the 2019-20 school year; the corporation’s certified staff evaluation plan; fee for the elementary school Lifeskills class textbook that was not included in the list for the July meeting; leaves of absence for Jay County High School school nurse Tonja McClain, East Elementary kindergarten instructional assistant Beth Dues and East kindergarten teacher Autumn Brown; and field trips for JCHS thespians for a leadership conference, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the state conference.

•Hired the following: Vicki Coons (JCHS resource instructional assistant), Rod Wolford (Bloomfield Elementary ESL instructional assistant), Amanda Specht (JCHS Lifeskills instructional assistant), Kathleen Fennig (East Jay Middle School part-time instructional assistant), Cory Murtha (West Jay Middle School custodian), Andrew Davidson (Westlawn Elementary fifth grade teacher), Abigail Jutte (Westlawn third grade teacher), Michelle Schuller (Westlawn second grade teacher), D Renee Haack (Westlawn Lifeskills teacher), Cathy Mock (EJMS preschool instructional assistant), Robert Kemp (JCHS math teacher), Carrie Schmit (bus driver), Macey Ashbaugh (EJMS eighth grade special education resource teacher), Christy Buening (General Shanks Elementary third grade teacher), Darian Jones (EJMS sixth grade English/language arts teacher) and Allie Wendel (speech/language pathologist).

•Accepted the following resignations: Kemper Amstutz (EJMS English/language arts teacher), Jeff Heller (General Shanks elementary third grade teacher and assistant JCHS wrestling coach), Emily Knapke (EJMS special education teacher), Diana Ulloa-Contreras (JCHS Spanish teacher), Megan Rowles (Redkey Elementary special education instructional assistant), James Roberts (Westlawn fifth grade teacher), Michael Hirschy (bus driver), Chuck Bihn (JCHS math teacher), Diana Hill (Westlawn third grade teacher), Jeff Svehla (WJMS science teacher), Clif DeRome (preschool director/speech language pathologist), Kari Anderson (JCHS English teacher), Sarah Cook (Bloomfield special education teacher) and Lindsey Edwards (part-time WJMS art teacher).

•Heard an update from resident district manager Siobhan Carey of Chartwells, the company now managing food service for the corporation. (See Thursday’s edition of The Commercial Review for an in-depth look at the new system.)