At its July 18 meeting, Berlin Community School board of education members unanimously passed a resolution authorizing an application for emergency state aid in response to the construction and anticipated completion of a new apartment complex later this fall.
“This motion is approved based on the impending financial stress the district will experience due to an 8.5 to 12.5 percent increase in student enrollment,” said the board’s agenda. “The expected influx of students is estimated to begin in September.”
According to Superintendent Joseph Campisi, the district is applying for the emergency state aid in the anticipation of 70 to 100 additional incoming students from the apartment complex.
Currently, according to multiple school administrators, the district has not been made aware of leases becoming official with the apartment complex as of yet; therefore no registrations for enrollment at BCS have been filled out either.
“If a district is experiencing financial distress, or potentially may experience financial distress, they fill out an application … and the Office of Fiscal Accountability and Compliance in Trenton will scrutinize every part of that,” said Campisi. “The difficult part is that I’m trying to set up funding and I don’t have a set amount [of incoming students yet]. We’re going into the unknown, so I just want to try to set us up.”
The district, Campisi says, expects to apply for the emergency state aid by the Aug. 9 deadline.
“We’ve got to be prepared for all different scenarios and all different timelines,” said Campisi. “We’re going to go off the estimate of 70 to 100 students when I submit the documents. The complex is going to open, we can only go off the information that we’ve been given right now.”
An added challenge for the district is that, on top of an unknown number of students being added to the school, the grade levels of incoming students are also unknown, creating the potential for some grade levels to see relatively no change while others are inundated.
Regardless, Campisi says school administration is working to address the problem proactively.
“We want to ensure that, financially, the teachers and staff have all the materials, programs, licenses and more so that they can provide a quality education every day, and then we’ll go from there,” said Campisi.
Also during the meeting, the board approved a switch in the district’s “To and From School Transportation” contract to Hillman’s Bus Service for an annual cost of $332,100 for the 2019-2020 year, as well as its “School Related Activities” transportation to Hillman’s Bus Services for the 2019-2020 year as well.
In recent years, the state has issued an increase in bus driver qualifications, leading to an increase in the cost for bus services. In the coming weeks before the upcoming school year starts, Business Administrator Cande Kristoff said she would work toward ensuring what she hopes will be a “successful transition” by requesting that the company practice driving the routes before the school year starts.
Additionally, the board passed a motion to approve Kelly Education Staffing for the school district’s substitute service for the 2019-2020 school year, agreeing to a one-year contract.
“They have a good product and they handle a lot of K to 8, or smaller K to 12 schools, in other states,” said Campisi. “Our goal is to have a 100 percent fill-rate [with substitutes].”
The board had also discussed a need for a switch in its substitute staffing services at its meeting last month.
Also at the meeting, Christina Weber was approved as the CER/PALS director for the period of July 15 through June 30, 2020.
