Arthur school district sets levy

By Editor | December 3, 2024 |

Address high school’s state report

At the November Arthur CUSD #305 School Board meeting, Superintendent Cheek talked about the tentative tax levy. He told the Board, “You’re all aware of how the tax levy has been presented and how it’s created every year.” He outlined the timeline with presenting the tentative levy this month and they will file the levy in person on or before the last Tuesday in December in all five counties. The hearing will be held in December and there will have to be an increase 5% or greater over the previous year of extensions.

Cheek continued, “There’s a formula that’s in school code and is created by the calculation based off EAV, which is where our challenges lie when you’re talking about EAV in five counties. The difference in those counties varies greatly. So, we have rate limitations. We’ve talked about how most of the accounts or funds that we work with are somewhat predetermined for us in terms of the rate. We do have some rate limits that we have complete control over, which are IMRF, tort and social security. And you’re going to hear me talk a little bit today about how we’ve consistently reduced those in the past and that’s the plan to do so this year as well. And then of course we have the bond that’s extended by the county to pay for the bond that’s set based on rate. So, this year the proposed aggregate levy is going to be set at 8.43%, which again I mentioned earlier, will require us to do a truth and taxation hearing.

“I want to reiterate this is the recommended setting level; it does not mean that taxes are going to increase by 8.43%. We’ve had that conversation multiple times, but I want to have it again. … The actual rate in this levy will go from 3.52, it’ll decrease to 3.38 so, our rate tax rate will actually decrease” Cheek stated.

He concluded, “The tax rate will go down, bills may go up because EAV goes up. That’s beyond our control, we’re blessed to live in a district where our EAV’s are healthy, but it does come with higher tax because of the EAV.”

It’s common for school districts to set a levy higher than they expect to receive for funds that are at their maximum tax rate in order to “capture” any increase in EAV without raising the tax rate.

The ongoing discussion of the Facility Naming policy continued at this month’s meeting in regard to the timeline of the process. The first reading of the policy will be held at the December meeting.

Cheek talked about the matching Maintenance Grant through ISBE (Illinois State Board of Education) and authorizing BLDD Architects to submit an amendment to the 10-year Health Life Safety survey fund for security upgrades in the district as they are both connected. He stated, “We have been applying for the $50,000 matching grant and utilize that every year, which has been nice. Amanda Romine, Director of Student Services/Technology Director has started the process for this already. We’ve got some servers that need to be upgraded as well and we can also add cameras throughout the district where we so choose, and we’ll be allowed to utilize health safety dollars to do these things.” The Board approved both motions to move forward.

Arthur Grade School Principal Andrew Peralta addressed the Board regarding a couple things. First he said, “I do want to make sure to draw your attention to thanking the high school for letting our grade school come for Veteran’s Day. Stephanie always does a fabulous job honoring the veterans of our community and it was really cool for my kids to be able to see that work and were able to sing and share during that day.” Peralta also wanted to highlight the work the Board gave permission and Mr. Cheek for the ESL position in English as a second language position. He said, “I’ve talked before about the growing Hispanic population that we’ve had at Arthur Grade school and just how scary it’s for a kid who comes in not speaking English, a teacher that doesn’t know how to handle that and just that transition has gotten so much better this year, and those students are thriving. So, I just want to thank the Board and give a public shout out to Mary Martinez and the work she’s done.”

Chris Forman, principal at Atwood Hammond Grade School talked about the pink day they did for Hannah Swarms, a paraprofessional at the school. “She is just a really sweet spirit. She’s in pre-K this year and she’s just been overwhelmed by the generosity of the community and the school. I think that just speaks a lot for Atwood and Hammond and our area of the district and what family and support meets to us up there,” Forman told the Board.

He also talked about PBIS, which is one of the things that AHGS does to promote positive behavior, and we give Knight bucks. If you earn 150 Knight bucks this year, you can be PrinciPAL for the day and Micah Brown was the first one to earn this and he was able to shadow me. Forman said, “He had a special vest, and we had mugs and mine said principal and his said PrinciPAL with the PAL highlighted and he just did a phenomenal job, he knocked it out of the park.”

Lovington Grade School Principal Marla Graham talked about their school report card and just the change from 2023 to 20244 and the significant growth which is super exciting.

She continued her report regarding a student she wanted to highlight and a story that happened at LGS. This student came to us in second grade and he’s now in fifth grade, but he was the kid that tore everything down in the hallways, flipped the desk, and all of that. He’s had such tremendous growth and just all of the things we’ve been doing, and our teachers have been doing this year.

It happened that he was riding his bike around town, and he saw an elderly lady unpacking her groceries and trying to get her garbage can out. He parked his bicycle, walked up to her and said, “Hey, are you Mr. Kirkwood’s aunt or grandma? We love Mr. Kirkwood, can I help you with your garbage can?” Graham stated, “This is a child who never would’ve done that.” And then when that was done and taken care of, he said, “You said you were getting groceries, can I carry your groceries in?” Principal Graham added, “So he offered, she declined but he offered. And I just think it’s really important, we really get caught up in the math and the reading and we want our scores to be amazing, don’t get me wrong, but I think it’s really important to not lose sight of growing a community of great kids. And that’s just a story of one in Lovington.”

Kathleen Burdick, Special Education Coordinator for the district told the Board she had just met with three ladies from Presence who had flown in from Denver and Texas. Burdick gave them a tour of the grade school and she said they took some pictures and bragged about the school and how great it looked. They also wanted to thank us because of Arthur, now Windsor and Tuscola were using them.

Parent-teacher conferences went well, and Burdick felt she received some really good feedback. She also thanked Principal Seegmiller for the collaboration to get two of our high school teachers to go to the ROE for the ACT Day. Burdick said, “I don’t know that we’ve ever sent our special education teachers so that was nice that we were able to get some subs, and I even came over and subbed for chemistry.”

Technology Director Amanda Romine talked about the school maintenance grant she has been working on and a grant for Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) that she applied for recently and just waiting to hear back. “I think it’s been two years ago now for AEDs for each of the four buildings. “I know we’re in need because some of them are ancient and so that will be helpful,” she stated.

Athletic Director Nathan Seal said “We have transitioned into winter sports season now, but looking back on our fall season, we had a very solid fall athletic season. We were very well represented in the All-Conference and we had at the high school level, two All-Staters in football as well.”

He added ALAH will be doing the Corn Bowl classic again with Cero Gordo this year to be held in Cerro Gordo and we hosted a volleyball super sectional. Seal told the Board, “The IHSA has asked us to host this multiple times and eventually we said yes in the summer, and I think that’s a testament to how we run things. But more importantly I think it’s a testament to the volunteers that we have to help run these events. And some of those volunteers are in the room tonight. It’s not just volleyball but it’s across the board with our announcers, the people keeping score and the books and the clocks and all that stuff. We can’t do that without them and I’m very appreciative of each and every one of them. There’s too many to name here. You come to our events, there’s a lot of people working behind the scenes and a lot of people have worked behind the scenes of making the super sectional successful as well as our other events.”.

Seal also stated the wall at the base of the scoreboard was completed. He thanked all the people that were involved with that. He said, “I have to say a special thank you to my wife as she went out there before our playoff games and put more mulch in and her and I and Steffanie rearranged some of the rocks that were out there. So, I think it turned into a very nice project with those plaques that were sold. Our generous booster club donated the proceeds back from this, the athletic department and those proceeds will go towards the shot clocks which will go up in December in the gym. So that’s where that money went.”

The final principal’s report came from ALAH High School Principal Steffanie Seegmiller. “So, with faculty at the beginning of November, right after the referendum, as you well know, we’ve taken a few hits in the paper about our SAT scores, and we know I get up here every year and talk about them. So, I think it’s just super important that we put this into perspective. If you look across the board, yes, what’s printed in the paper and in the articles have been correct, but a couple of things we need to remember is the SAT is not required by colleges anymore, it’s optional for most students. What we’re learning is they’re not sharing those, so using this as one data point is just really tough. And I think it’s also important that we compare with schools that are our size and even some larger schools.

The focus of these test scores are based on our SATs from the Class of 2025. If you look at the overall index score, you would see that 91.26% would have earned us an exemplary rating.

• We had 88% graduation rate (state 88%) and last year 97%.

• Our freshman on track to graduate rate was 88% (state average 88.2%) and last year 94.2%.

• We had 71% of our students meeting or exceeding on the science assessment. The state requires all juniors to take this assessment. The

state average was 53%. (We beat the state average by 18%)

• SAT scores show that the Class of 2025 grew from their fall scores from 876 to 938. (The state average was 953.)

• 25% met both benchmarks, 27% of the state met

• 28% met 1 benchmark; state had 25% meet 1 benchmark

• English – 53% met and 51% of state met

• We beat the state average in ERW

• Math 25% met and 29% of the state met WE ARE SO CLOSE!

• 25 students score higher than 1000

• 4 students earn free tuition at Lake Land

• 35 students beat the state average

“So comparing them to the class above them isn’t really fair. We need to compare them as a class of 2025 and where they came into high school and where we were able to get them. A couple of other parts about this is we beat the state average in English. Now remember from years past, the state board of education takes the college board scores and they say well we’re better in Illinois so we’re going to have a higher standard.” Seegmiller commented.

When Seegmiller attended the state IPA conference in October, the state superintendent said they’re going to change that, that they’re going to stop adjusting those scores and everyone will be able to go with the national norm. She feels that will help ALAH.

“In comparison with schools that are our size and even some larger schools, the average in language arts was 20%. Two of these schools, Maroa-Forsyth and Oakland beat us. They (Oakland) had maybe 15 students and when you look at our scores, we had 72 students take the SAT for the class of 2025. Five of those students are from alternative schools so Bridges and TLC, those students aren’t exposed to the curriculum that we’re teaching here. So those scores that scored low, we had some of our lowest scores that I think I’ve seen from the class of 2025. We also had nine IEPs, we had eight scores in the 600’s so when it’s 1600 and 600 and you have so many scores in the 600 that really is a hit for us,” Seegmiller said.

The switch from the SAT to the ACT is huge Principal Seegmiller stated. How it’s written, how it’s tested, there’s a lot of timing factors. The English test for example, is 45 minutes long. That’s just one portion of it’s 75 questions so, 45 minutes – 75 questions and it’s essentially all grammar. The essay writing is completely different than what we’ve been teaching for years.

In closing she said, “I can talk about this for days. So I told the faculty, they’re pretty blue. and I think when you add the fact in about the scores and what the perception is that we’re not teaching kids reading and writing and math, but that’s not the case. If we were going to be with the SAT next year, I would be pretty confident that we would come even closer to beating the state average. I’m nervous about the ACT and the switch because of how the test switch is. It’s just so different. We have a good team in place and are working hard getting them prepared.”

In other information Cheek highlighted they made two bond payments during the consent agenda discussion. He also made mention of two donations for the month, with one from Churches of Lovington Association for $1,000 for the backpack program in Lovington. The second one was from The Great Pumpkin Patch for a donation of pumpkins for Lovington Grade School for painting valued at $350.

Superintendent Cheek in closing regarding the work towards the referendum said, “I don’t even know where to end with my thanks because I am sincere when I say it’s recognized, appreciated, and there is no way it would’ve been that close without it. They came and knocked on doors. I mean the effort put forth was awesome.” He thanked the Vote Yes committee members, the high school staff for making the videos, CORE Construction for their efforts on the campaign/videos, Rod Wright, and Damien Schlitt with BLDD Architects.

In regards to major pipe breakage at the high school Cheek thanked Jack and Bob from J.C.Oye Cheek stated, “Jack was here till 11 o’clock at night one night. He’s amazing–I mean just to have something like that available to us is awesome. So, I don’t know how he does what he does, but man, it’s impressive. And to get that work done in such a short amount of time for us to have school is amazing. We had school, the other buildings had regular school and we just had school with no kids and the amount of people that chipped in was awesome. You don’t get that everywhere. And to see our teachers saying, what can I do to seeing Steffanie there digging in.”

He went on thanking Justin and Brock, the school’s janitorial crew, and the flexibility they showed.

Personnel report:

Certified:

• accepted certified staff members intent to retire letter

• accepted resignation from Mrs. Jenny Rau as the Title I teacher at LGS

• approved certified staff members request for a leave of absence

Non-Certified:

• accepting resignation from Administrative Assistant Mrs. Faezah Parsa at LGS

• approved hiring Mikayla Graham to serve as a paraprofessional at LGS

Read the discussion the Arthur school referendum issue on page B3.

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