Woodland Hills School Board Sets Agenda for Next Week's Meeting

Woodland Hills School Board discussed issues of finance, personnel and school’s facilities at Wednesday's agenda setting meeting.

At the Oct. 11 regular meeting, the board will discuss the approval of the activity funds from August. The activities funds were of particular interest to board member Colleen Filiak, who noticed an account with a negative balance.

“We continue to have a negative balance in one of the high school class accounts. Is that being addressed?” Filiak asked her fellow board members.

According to Filiak, a class account held a negative balance of $517, something that she said is theoretically not supposed to happen after a class has graduated and they can no longer use the money they raised.

Joyce Sullivan, the board secretary and business manager, said that after an audit of the activities funds, they found part of the reason for the negative balance was bookkeeping errors of up to $250. According to Sullivan, there would be a meeting this week to discuss the issue.

Filiak also showed concern over the amount of money being put toward clubs, some of which may be defunct.

“A number of these accounts have significant amounts of money,” Filiak said.

According to Sullivan, a list of what they consider inactive clubs will be examined and then there will be a movement to eliminate these clubs.

The board will also vote to eliminate two positions as they currently stand with the school in the technology department. According to Assistant Superintendent Alan Johnson, this is because the job descriptions are no longer valid.

“The problem is that the current job descriptions and the current positions assignments really don’t reflect what they’re currently doing,” Johnson said.

Filiak requested to see the exact salary numbers, current job description and where the funding would come to pay for the raise in the two salaries.

“We’re giving salary increases and as far as I can tell there’s no way to pay them,” said Filiak, mentioning that this change should’ve been done when the board was making their yearly budget.

A list of requests to use the school’s facilities brought the board to discuss a problem with the paperwork for the YMCA morning program in the Edgewood Primary School.

The YMCA had previously not paid the fee for using the school district’s space or supplied the proper paperwork after the first year of the program, which has now gone on for three or fouryears.

“It’s kind of funny in a way but really annoying to me,” Johnson said.

Johnson said he wants the school district to show more administrative control and that this blunder is an "embarrassment" to him but this will not happen in the future.

Board member Tara Reis brought up an idea for the Wolverine Spirit Awards to incorporate the whole school board. In the past, only one person gave away the awards, but Reis noted that there are nine board members and nine buildings.

“I thought it would be nice if each one of us was assigned to a building, go down there meet the family before and introduce them,” Reis said.

Johnson, who had previously given away the awards, approved of Reis’ idea.

“I think that’d be an interesting and exciting thing both for this board and this district,” Johnson said.

Other issues to look out for on the Oct. 10 meeting:

• Possible replacement of the exterior doors at the high school.
• Vote to approve the AIU Waterfront Learning as a cyber school option for people with very special cases. According to Johnson, the district does not pay for the service unless a student needs to use it.
• Possible approval of the junior high class trip to Washington D.C.

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