Columbia Public Schools board approves next year’s budget
UPDATE: The audience broke into applause when the Columbia Public Schools Board of Education approved a budget that will feature money for teacher supplies Monday night.
The district will use some of its nearly nine million dollar surplus from the current school year to help fund it. CFO Heather McArthur and Superintendent Peter Stiepleman said it will take time to figure out how to do it.
Kathy Steinhoff told ABC 17 News that she was grateful for the decision to help teachers buy supplies for their classrooms. She said 82 percent of teachers recently surveyed said they at one point spent their own money for supplies.
“I’ve heard of teachers that say they spend more than a thousand dollars a year, between bulletin board supplies and supplies for students who don’t have what they need, or snacks in their classroom for students that are hungry,” Steinhoff said. “But it just varies from school to school and teacher to teacher.”
ORIGINAL: The Columbia Public Schools Board of Education is set to vote on a $224 million oprating budget on Monday night.
The budget features a $6.5 million increase toward salary and benefits for the district’s faculty and staff.
Chief financial officer Heather McArthur said the district would also look into spending some of its $8.7 million surplus from last year to help teachers buy supplies for their classrooms. Kathy Steinhoff, head of the Columbia Missouri National Education Association, suggested that at the board’s meeting last Wednesday.
The district expects to bring on more than 10 full-time employees with the opening of the new building for Cedar Ridge Elementary. Dozens more will be hired when the district opens its new middle school in 2020.
