Monday's Internet Edition, October 06, 2008.
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The first question given to candidates was “What qualifies you to be a school board trustee?” and was published in last week’s paper.
This week, we asked the candidates “What do you feel is the biggest challenge facing Copperas Cove Independent School District? What aspect of CCISD needs improvement?”
Candidates’ answers appear alphabetically.
Mary Ann Glass:
The biggest challenge facing CCISD and all public schools across the nation is financing. With state and federal budget shortfalls, we will be facing educating children with less money coming from the state and federal government. We will have all the state and federal mandates to follow without receiving enough money from them to cover the cost. It will be left up to each school district to find a shortfall.
CCISD will continue to fight for equal funding from the State of Texas. Once upon a time, the State of Texas paid 80 percent of the cost to educate our children. This past year, the state paid less than 39 percent of the cost. CCISD has been very prudent with their finances and our financial state is very healthy. The CCISD board has already charged the administration with bringing in a balanced budget with no new taxes for the 2003-2004 school year.
The one area I feel needs improvement is communications. I think we need to do a better job of keeping the taxpayers and general public informed. The school board and superintendent meet every three months for team building. These meetings consist of evaluating what we are doing and discussing things which need to be done. When an item comes up on an agenda to vote on, we have already looked at all the pros and cons of any issue. The general public does not know this. The meetings are open to the public, but no one ever comes.
The board and administration are already aware that we need to find a better way to communicate with the general public, and are looking at different ways that we can accomplish this important task.
William (Bill) Waltz:
Any school district is always going to have the challenge of maintaining a budget. The challenge is to make sure the public understands what their money is being spent on and use it wisely. Rumors are I feel the number one factor why the citizens feel outraged when their money in their view is not being “spent” properly. One area of misunderstanding may be Impact Aid.
In my opinion, not enough information is being presented to the public on the challenges facing the school district. It is understandable that some of the people are not going to be happy with the outcome in some situations, but you “can’t please all the people all the time.”
The aspect is to keep the voters informed of what is happening in their school district. The board should use all avenues of approach available to them to keep the taxpayer informed. As board members we are voted in and can be voted out.