It was a financial night for the Bremen School Board as they heard a preliminary presentation on the coming year’s budget.
The board will have a final presentation on the numbers in their September meeting in preparation for a tentative date of Oct. 9 for the public hearing with an Oct. 23 special meeting of the board for final adoption.
Bremen currently has 1,470 students enrolled and the expected draw from the state for the education fund will be around $11.7 million. Debt service will remain the same in the coming year and the operations fund for the coming year — drawn from property taxes — has a cap of 4 percent which will give the corporation around $4.3 million for the operations fund for the coming year.
Superintendent Dr. Jim White told the board that the corporation’s cash flow is currently in positive numbers.
He also told the board that soon the corporation would be spending $55,000 to upgrade lighting in all the buildings in order to be more energy efficient and see savings in utilities.
The board was updated by Bremen High School Principal Andrew Rohde on SAT scores.
Rohde said that while test scores around the state had seen a downturn, scores at Bremen High School had gone up across the board.
Rohde said that Bremen students were 5 percent higher than other schools in the county in English, 9 percent higher in Math, and 10 percent higher in those who passed both. The Bremen numbers were even higher when compared against the state average.
Over the past two years Rohde told the board that while state averages dropped, Bremen’s increased.
White updated the board on several capital projects that had been undertaken during the summer, mainly the upgrades to Don Bunge Field with re-sodding and building of a new press box, and a new scoreboard. White said he expected everything to be ready for the Lion’s first home game. He gave the board a heads up on a project that is being considered for a similar upgrade of the baseball field — re-sodding the infield — that was being considered but not decided on.
