School Board OKs bond for Nov. 5 ballot

A question will be put on the Nov. 5 ballot asking voters in the Van Buren Public School district to approve a bond not to exceed $35,490,000 to build a new early childhood center, including remodeling of existing school buildings and other projects.
At Monday’s regular meeting the school board unanimously approved the ballot proposal. Board president Keith Johnston was not present at the meeting.
The estimated millage for the bond will be .78 mills for 30 years and there will be no increase in taxes for taxpayers. The district had refunded bonds for the high school construction, which lowered the interest rate on those bonds. This lowered cost of the bonds is being used as incentive to taxpayers to approve the new bonds without increase in cost.
If the bond is not approved, the district would have to lower the taxes being paid for those original bonds.
School Supt. Pete Kudlak said the district received approval from Treasury, the State, Thrun law firm, “and now the only thing left to do is put it on the Nov. 5 ballot.”
He read aloud the ballot language.
“We’ll highlight what we’re doing,” Supt. Kudlak said concerning the education of voters that has to take place. “We’ll do a lot of educating on that.”
Later in the meeting Kudlak passed out a document informing board members on the law on school elections and what they can and cannot do for a bond election.
He said the district can inform voters, but not advocate for the bond.
“We can’t use school funds, time, or resources,” he said. “But we can send out information.”
He said board members are permitted to say their opinion on the bond on their personal email.
Kudlak said he will be educating the administration and staff, as well, on what they can and cannot do under the Campaign Finance Act, along with the PTO.
“If somebody wants to organize a campaign committee – whoever they are – they can do so to support the millage, as well as those who oppose it,” he said.
Board vice president Susan Featheringill, who was chairing the meeting in president Johnston’s absence, said people in the community may wonder if a board member is not saying yes, go out and vote it, then why are they doing it?
“We don’t want to get in any trouble,” Featheringill said, concerning paying strict attention to the law.
“Things we’re sending out were sent to Thrun first,” Kudlak said of the district’s law firm. “We don’t want to get the wrong word in there.”
In other business at Monday’s meeting, the board:
• Approved hiring Dionisia Munoz, RN, as a full-time district resource nurse as of Aug. 1. Her office will be in the Administration Building and she will be traveling throughout the district. She will work with parents and school staff to make sure health plans are in place for students with issues. She also will train staff on how to give medications and oversee it all. Kudlak said he will send out new school information, including on the nurse, before school starts;
• Approved paying $40,000 to Ypsilanti Township to replace the entire drive in the area where a new sidewalk is going to be installed at Rawsonville Elementary School. James Williams, director of plant operations, said the township has offered to connect its bike path to the school’s sidewalk with 500 feet of new 5’ wide sidewalk at no cost to the district. In conjunction with the new sidewalk, the contractor will have to remove and replace a 500’x4’ piece of the drive to install the sidewalk appropriately, at no cost to the school district. Both the township and the school district agree it would make sense for the school district to replace the remainder of the West drive, which has deteriorated over the past couple of years. They added the drive to their specifications when they bid out the bike path project and $40,000 will replace the whole drive. This is from the sinking fund. Williams said they were ready to start on Thursday;
• Approved the purchase of new furniture for two classrooms at McBride from the Great Lakes Furniture Supply Company in the amount of $32,055 and two rooms of furniture for Savage Elementary from the Dew-El Corporation in the amount of $32,222. Williams said a couple of years ago it was decided that each building could replace furniture in two classrooms per year, allowing for a slow and more-economical way to update the buildings;
• Approved the second reading and final adoption of board policy updates as recommended by NEOLA and the board policy committee made up of Featheringill and board members Calvin Hawkins and Amy Pearce;
• Approved the July 12 resignation of Lynn Johnson from Maintenance after one year of service and the hiring of Cynthia Maschat as a bus driver as of Sept. 3;
• Approved the layoff of teacher Alicia Doty-Densemo as of June 30 from Haggerty school after two years of service; and the resignation of teacher Melissa Lloyd from Owen as of July 31 after 10.5 years of service;
• Approved hiring Stacy Lucas and Dena Gyulveszi as teachers at Rawsonville Elementary as of Aug. 27; and Lauren Halapi as a teacher at Belleville High School, as of Aug. 27;
• Learned 101 people applied for the position of Owen principal and 89 of those were considered. Parents and teachers have been involved in the screening of the applicants. There was phone screening on 28 plus internal candidates. Fourteen, including four internal candidates, will be considered in the first round of interviews on Aug. 1. The second round will be Aug. 2;
• Heard a report on how the transition to the new district insurance program is going and that Human Resource Director Abdul Madyun is able to help people with questions and solve problems as they arise;
• Heard board member Simone Pinter say she was at a local event when a parent said he was disappointed BHS didn’t have kids in the building trades. She told him they do. The BHS students interested in the building trades are taken to Westland where there is a program. She said people don’t know about this. Featheringill said, “We need to do a better job of letting people know”; and
• Went into closed session at the end of the meeting to consider a request by a guardian to reinstate student 18-19-020 for the upcoming school year. The student had been expelled during the 2018-19 school year. The board went back into public session and voted to reinstate the student with conditions.