May 18, 2007 By Christine Haines 3 min read

CALIFORNIA – The California Area School Board approved a tentative general fund budget of $3.5 million that would require a 2-mill tax increase if adopted as the final budget. “We have to adopt a final one next month. We are working on the budget to make it a zero mill increase,” said Tom Russell, the president of the school board.

The property tax in the district is currently 93.07 mills, according to Dr. Tim Marks, the district superintendent.

“Two mills is a little less than $70,000,” Marks said.

There had been some confusion over whether the district was required to adopt its final budget in May, but Marks said the district is able to follow its usual schedule of adopting a tentative budget in May and the final budget in June.

“The Act 1 legislation was confusing some folks and there was a statewide e-mail sent out saying we had to have the final budget tonight,” Marks said Wednesday.

The early budget adoption was only required of districts that intended to increase taxes beyond the cap placed on them by the Act 1 legislation. The cap on the California Area School District for the 2007-08 school year is 4.9 percent, or more than 4.5 mills.

In other matters Wednesday, the board failed to hire a varsity girls’ basketball coach. Only six board members were present at the meeting. Four voted in favor of hiring Cindy Dunlevy to the subcontracting position. They were John Bayer, Terri Doman, Norm Hasbrouck and Tom Russell. Donna Tyrpin voted against the measure and George Safin abstained, since he had missed the committee-of-the whole meeting and executive session where the position had been discussed.

The board voted to reconvene the board meeting at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, May 23 at Philipsburg School to again address the coaching issue.

“We need to hire a basketball coach. These kids should have been playing in tournaments,” Doman said.

Doman said the team has been asked to play in a summer tournament in Monessen and all three candidates for the coaching job said they would be able to handle that duty, Doman said.

The board voted to hire Christa Grillo as a substitute school nurse for the remainder of the 2006-07 school year. She will actually be working alongside the current school nurse, Marks said.

“It’s a pilot study between now and the end of the school year. Then we will evaluate it to see if we want to make it the permanent way of handling nursing services,” Marks said. “Both buildings will be covered. There are so many medication needs; we really need her so we can closely monitor the administration of medications and cover emergencies.”