Mount Vernon News

MOUNT VERNON — According to the Ohio School Boards Association, there were 237 Ohio school issues on Tuesday’s ballot. Locally, four districts asked voters to approve school tax issues: Fredericktown, Johnstown-Monroe, North Fork and Northridge.

With over 700 provisional ballots still to be counted, unofficial election results indicate that Fredericktown school district residents, by a 100-vote margin, passed a 4.96-mill substitute emergency levy to generate $625,000 in operating money.

“We’re excited. We’re feeling good and appreciate the support from the district residents,” said Superintendent Dan Humphrey. “This just makes us breathe a little bit easier because we know that we’re not going to have to go on the ballot next year — we can make this work for another year. It’s a relief to see this go through. We’ll start making some plans and continue to control spending and do the best job we can for the next year.”

Northridge asked voters to approve a five-year, 3.5-mill emergency operating levy. The issue did not pass, with 60 percent rejecting the proposal. The money would have been used to stabilize the budget, update curriculum and textbooks and maintain current programming. A portion was to be earmarked for maintenance and repairs. One hundred and fifty-seven Northridge school district residents who live in Knox County voted against the operating levy; 76 voted for it.

Northridge superintendent John Shepard is disappointed.

“We understand the state of the economy and perhaps why people didn’t vote for the levy. However, our focus is to teach kids every day,” he said. “There’s not much we can do when the voters turn down a levy to that degree. It’s unfortunate, but this is the third time we have asked for additional money and we don’t have it; we’re not generating any more revenue. We’ll just have to start cutting. There’s no immediate plans for cuts right away, but we’ll be addressing those in the near future. It will be very lean. Clearly we’re going to have to look at cutting programming and it will impact instruction.”

North Fork Local Schools had a 2.7-mill bond issue for the renovation and construction of school facilities; specifically, renovation of the present junior high school, the addition of classroom space and the construction of a new high school gymnasium and auditorium.

Commenting before final results were in, Superintendent Scott Hartley said, “Actually, we’re going to still hold out hope. In the event that the issue does fail, it will be up to the school board to decide what they want to do and where we want to go from here.”

The levy did fail: 67 percent of the Licking County ballots were against the levy. In Knox County, voters rejected the bond issue, too; 279 voted for the issue and 707 voted against it.

Residents of the Johnstown-Monroe district were asked to approve two issues. One was a five-year, 5-mill property tax to be used for permanent improvements such as roof repairs, maintenance, textbooks, equipment and instructional technology. That issue failed by 175 votes. The second was a five-year, 1 percent school income tax to help pay for daily operating expenses. That was also rejected by the voters.

“I do not believe the voters are anti-school,” said board of education president John Davis. “I believe the voters feel they just can’t afford to support the schools at this time. Johnstown’s in a world of hurt, as are many other districts, but that doesn’t make me feel any better. It makes me feel worse. Other people are even worse off than we are.

“Our next step — we will have to be back in the spring,” he continued. “The problem is, collection of anything passed in ’09 wouldn’t start until ’10. So, we have major implications. We are going to have to look at reductions, and quite frankly I don’t believe we can make enough reductions. We’re trying to keep the integrity of some of the programs and boy, we’re struggling. Quite frankly, we don’t have any other avenue to go down. The state’s doing what the state’s going to do, and the rest of it has to come from local initiatives. We’re just going to try to refocus and do the best we can.”