Meeks called the meeting to order at 7:00 p.m. at the Township Hall with all Trustees, Fiscal Officer, and Fitzgerald present.  Ruthanne Wilkof from the Jackson-Belden Chamber of Commerce, Paula Blangger, Ken Douglas and Cheryl Haschak from the Jackson Local School District were also present.

Meeks requested that all cell phones and pagers be turned off at this time.

The Pledge of Allegiance was recited.

Meeks welcomed the officials from the Jackson Local School District and the public.  He then turned the meeting over to Ms. Haschak.

Haschak:  Well, first I’d like to thank you for having us here.  We’ve been into a number of homes in the community and that’s been a great thing.  I’d like to thank some of our teachers for being here.  They’re kind of my cheerleaders and I can’t thank them enough.  Kody, you’re here and Frank, so I’d like to thank them for coming tonight, too.  I know some of our teachers have gone out to the homes to just listen to some of the concerns and to be able to answer some of the questions.  It’s been a great experience, we’ve certainly learned a lot.  We’re not perfect by any means but I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done and we hope to continue, no matter what happens, going to homes so that we do listen to what our community feels is important, questions they have of us and just maybe some goals they have for us.  Some people have had some great ideas of ‘have you thought about doing some things differently’.  So it’s been a great experience.

I will tell you, and I’ve called all the newspapers and talked with them, and again, I can’t thank our teachers enough.  I know it’s because of them that we’re the school district that we are.  Fortunately, today we were able to settle a three year contract with our teachers and, again, we are in serious financial straits, as far as the school district, and our contract was up at this point in time.  And I know a number of people have asked, in fact there hasn’t been one meeting, has there, Ken, that we’ve gone to that the question on insurance has been asked.  It’s been a difficult one and something that, as teachers, we’ve had for years and years and we know that we are in difficult times.  And, again, I can’t tell the teachers thanks enough, but they have stepped up to the plate and they will be paying 9% of their health insurance and receiving a 1% raise.  And so I know that they have said that they understand also that we are in a financial crunch.  We’ve also talked with them about any future raises that will have to be based on whether we pass a levy or not.  And it has to be if a levy is passed and that the most they would receive, if the levy is passed, would be a 2% raise in the second and third year of our contract.  So, again, the Board I know, we’ve talked all day long, appreciates what the staff has done and that’s why, like I said at the beginning, we are a great school system.  And that even in difficult financial times, they’ve been willing to put our kids first.  So for you teachers that are here, I can’t thank you enough.  I know it’s not fun at this time.  We’ve not been in this situation for a number of years but I do appreciate what the teachers have been willing to do.  I guess from there I don’t want to chit chat, I’d rather listen to some of the questions and concerns that you have.  So ask whatever questions you’d like to ask.

Unidentified:  Recently another of your former employees was indicted for theft.  You probably can’t talk about the specifics but some of us might want to know who’s minding the store.

Haschak:  Well, I will say that we really can’t talk about that situation other than what was in the newspaper.  We have gone through our financial records.  We called the State in immediately and had them go through our records.  We also had a forensic auditor come in and look at our records.  Unfortunately, we supervise what we feel is the best, but sometimes incidents do happen, unfortunately.  I did speak with our forensic auditor just today, we’re having a luncheon with him to discuss how we can look again at tightening up anything to do with finances and making sure that those opportunities aren’t available.

Douglas:  I’ll talk a little, not specifically about that case, but my background is in audit.  I’m a CPA and audit person.  The school did find what happened, so their internal control system did work.  Now we can always argue, should they have found it earlier or later, but they did find it.  It wasn’t that somebody else found it.  So their system did work.

And also I’ll tell you from, not this case specifically, but other cases where I’ve dealt with this type of stuff, no matter how good your internal control system is, if somebody wants to steal from you they can probably do that.  Because, you know, to prevent anybody from doing anything the cost would outweigh the benefits.  You can’t have six people checking on every check that goes out and everything that goes out like that.  So it’s a balance of how much do you want to spend versus what’s the risk.  So again I think it’s commendable that the school found it and then we turned it over to the police and so we can’t talk that much about it but at the end of the day, I hear what you’re saying people, nobody wants to see their money stolen and we certainly are just like you, we don’t want to see it stolen and if somebody does that then we’re certainly going to take action on it.

Wilkof:  I’d like to tag on to that, too, Ken.  Even in my own office in the Chamber with a small office you can’t control it.  Our office has been up against this very same thing.  Anytime you have money lying there, I don’t care how many people check it and I have auditors come in and check the Chamber books as well and we’ve been stolen from as well.

Douglas:  We do get an audit from the State every year and that audit has been clean.  Unfortunately, again, an audit is, they aren’t going to look at every transaction and find everything.  They do tests and samples and that type of stuff but our audit has come back clean so that gives us some comfort, too, in overall that things are okay.

Haschak:  And I will tell you as soon as, like I said, as soon as we thought we might have a problem we did call the State immediately and they did come up and then, like I also said, we hired a private forensic auditor to also look at all of our books with us.

Gonzalez:  If I could, since this is kind of a joint meeting, I think most of you understand the Jackson Board of Trustees really doesn’t have anything to do with the School District other than we all believe in strong schools and putting out good citizens – it’s a big draw to our community.  But one thing I would like to explain to you is the effect the Township does have on the schools.

One of the trends we are seeing is the change in the makeup of our community.  That is for years the makeup of Jackson Township was 50% of our tax base came from commercial and 50% came from the residents.  Over the last 10 years, I’ll put this in a way that I think everyone will understand, if you remember when the Strip was being built, it was a large commercial business.  From that time, we’ve really had nothing built other than a lot of developers buying farms and building houses.  And the building for residential stuff went way up and commercial just froze over the last 10 years.  Now what’s happened, and I can tell you this for a fact, it’s gone from 50% funding of commercial to 66% funding residential.  So now the burden of this school levy which used to be 50% on the businesses is now 66% on the residents.  So that happens when we put on a Police Levy or a Fire Levy and we always try to explain that, so for years we worked to try to keep a balanced budget and by doing that trying to shift the building in equal parts.  Like what you see going on over here on the corner is important to get that evaluation back up on the commercial properties.  And with the expansion of Belden Village, we just left a meeting with them, that will raise the commercial properties to try to get our budget back to 50 – 50.  But right now that’s one of the reasons when you see a school levy or police levy they seem to be so much higher than they have been in the past.  It is one of the factors.

Unidentified:  Why is it that way?  Why is commercial (undecipherable)

Gonzalez:  Largely because of the economy, the businesses just didn’t build for the last 10 years and when the interest on loans went way down, building for the last 5 to 10 years has been huge because home interest has been so low.  Our population has risen just since the 2000 census, we’ve gone up about, I think, it’s about 6,000 people.

Haschak:  Randy, can you talk about the relationship between strong schools and strong business?

Unidentified:  I think everyone in this room honestly believes that they’re doing the right thing by being here and by the issues.  I know Cheryl knows she needs that money but we’re just faced with. . .  As far as I can recall our rate in Jackson Township is about 7.5 mills, is that correct?  We’re asking for 4.5 which is roughly 6%.  Doesn’t sound like much.  Fuel went up today from $3.00 to $3.20, that’s 6%.  The same as we’re asked to cover.  I think everybody knows we need it.  I don’t mean to be a historian but if we could look back a couple years, I don’t want to put the burden on Cheryl, but she has a broad shoulder there, if we wouldn’t have built the $45 million down the street, would we have been better off today if that were only $30 million or a little less?  This is something we can’t do anything about but voters would like to know that.  If somebody says, you know, it looked good at the time, but the times changed.  We had to use that.  The economics of the Township has changed drastically and I think we voters would really appreciate an answer on some of that.  I read the papers every day and I research and I recall that $45 million divided by 150,000 square feet is $300.00 a square foot.  The state average is $162.00 a square foot.

Douglas:  The 150,000 is just the new square footage and we’re also remodeling 300,000 existing. . .

Unidentified:  Ken, I believe you, but why doesn’t it come out in the paper and things like that.  We’re kind of in the dark.

Douglas:  Well, we understand.

Unidentified:  I read the article that said you were under the average and I’m pretty good at math.

Douglas:  Right, then more. . .

Unidentified:  (undecipherable) but do you have an answer.

Gonzalez:  Must have gone to Jackson.

Douglas:  Yes, and that’s. . .

Unidentified:  We don’t hear those answers.

Douglas:  I understand.  It’s hard for us to control what’s in the paper.

Unidentified:  They interviewed you.

Douglas:  Well, if they’d ask the question, we’d tell them the same thing.

Unidentified:  (undecipherable) the interview.

Douglas:  No, not necessarily.  We can give them answers, that doesn’t mean that’s what appears in the paper.  They may sit and talk to somebody for 15 minutes, you know, well, they’re going to take out pieces of that and so that’s what ends up in your . . .  But to get to your question, would we be better off if we built a smaller high school.  Keep in mind, and I know you guys will know this, but that was paid for by separate money.  That was an election back in March of 2004 that was approved for that high school.  So if it would have been a smaller amount back then, if that’s what had been approved, that’s what we would have built.

Unidentified:  It’s different money to you but it’s the same money for us.

Douglas:  I understand that but that wouldn’t change where we’re at right now.  Really what we’re looking for now is operating funds.  You mentioned gas went up 19 cents a gallon today.  Our buses, the diesel, went up, you know, 19 cents a gallon today.  And so unfortunately, it’s not something we want to hear as a taxpayer but some of the same burdens we have at home, whether it’s increased health care costs, increased utilities, and the school has that same stuff.  And so that’s why they’re coming back.  So this is for the operating of the schools, not necessarily the building.  They’re kind of different.  I understand they all come out of the same pocket but to answer your question, I don’t think it would make much difference what we built before versus now.  We’d still be, right now, coming in looking for operating funds.

Haschak:  I don’t want to minimize that amount but the millage was reduced.  By the time the taxpayer paid the millage it ended up being 1.2 mills to help build all of those things.  So it’s a blessing and a curse, the blessing is our millage is worth quite a bit more than if you looked at in Osnaburg or any other school system and we’re fortunate in that regard.  But what we tried to do is build for the future and thinking about how many kids we have down the road and actually the building and what that bond issue was totally about wasn’t just the high school.  We did add on to Lake Cable and we added on to Amherst also with that money.  Those buildings are pretty well full now.  We have about 550 kids at both of those buildings.  Those buildings had about 450 – 425 before we did that, so now we do have those buildings and we’ve built them so that capacity-wise, the cooling and heating system in those buildings is built so that as the school district grows those buildings can continue to be added on to rather than additional buildings.  So we tried to look to the future even when we looked at our elementary buildings.

Unidentified:  Is the high school similarly utilized to what you described for the two elementary schools?

Haschak:  Yes, we have 1900 students there right now.  It’s built to house 2200 students. Our high school is what we call a comprehensive high school.  It has vocational programs in it and academic programs and what they call now tech prep programs in the building.  We are also part of a consortium where kids, if we do not have a vocational program, a good example right now is cosmetology, they go to Plain Local to take cosmetology, so there are six of us that share vocational programs so that our kids get even more vocational programs if they’d like to do that.  So we do meet several times a year and talk about what programs we’re going to offer each year and try not to duplicate programs so that we don’t have enough kids for those.  I will say cosmetology is one that we always have kids shut out of.  It gets larger and larger and it’s a program that is always booked.  We have to turn kids away.

Douglas:  One of the nice opportunities about having the high school as Cheryl mentioned, it can take 2200, we have 1900 right now, if anyone was at the last Board meeting, one of the things we’re looking at doing for the first time is accepting tuition students from outside of Jackson.  Just at the high school level.  We’re allowed to charge tuition and not have open enrollment so that anyone can come here, but we can kind of say, okay, we’d like to have 50 or 100 kids come into Jackson that don’t live here, pay a tuition that more than covers their cost, at just the high school level, not have to bus the kids so we wouldn’t have that expense.  So we’re looking at some stuff like that because one of the comments we’ve heard from people at the meetings is, you know, ‘you need to think outside the box a little bit.  What other revenue besides coming back to the property owners all the time, what else can you do’.  And then this is a way we’re saying ‘well, maybe if we can make some money’ and now that we have the capacity, we couldn’t have done that before, the high school was full.  Now we have maybe a little opportunity to do some of those types of things.

Unidentified:  Just a couple comments.  I think it’s fair to say that when you built that high school and we added on to it, you looked at what it would take 10 years from now, let’s say to build that again, it’s a lot less now than it would be then.  So then rather than have to come back to the voters again and build and add on again that delta between there is much longer.

Douglas:  Right.  And that’s exactly right.  We don’t want to come back again and sometimes, and this is kind of related to Strausser a little bit, we hear about how big Strausser is and did it need to be that big.  It’s built for a little over 900 kids.  We have a little over 800 now.  The other option was to build two smaller schools.  Well, then, you’re looking at two sets of cafeteria people, and two sets of everything else.  So it was determined, let’s build one big school and have some economies because of that size and stuff.  The same thing with the high school, we don’t want to come back and say two years from now we were short and we need to do another bond levy.

Haschak:  The other thing with our high school and having lived there myself, I was an assistant principle right after I, I hate to admit this, but right after the high school opened.  And back then really, as far as sprinkling systems and life support systems, life was very different then.  And literally our building, if you would have raised one of the tiles, you could look from one end of that building to the other.  There were no fire walls in the building.  There was no sprinkling system in the building.  There were a number of things that are now required by code that were not in the older part of the building.  The older part of the building is 30 years old and taken very well, you know the kids really took very good care of the building and our custodians, I can’t say enough about.  But really as far as updating our building the other issue and I hate to say that we have to do it but after Columbine, unfortunately, we have to have cameras in our buildings and security systems and you saw it happen again.  Those are all things that in the older part of the building were difficult to do.  We had to rewire a lot of the building to make sure that we are able to watch all of the hallways.  There are like 52 doors on that building so to try to be able to manage those doors and make sure that they are closed and the building is secure for the day.  So those are all issues that 30 years ago we really didn’t have to deal with and 10 years ago we didn’t have to deal those but we do now, unfortunately.

Douglas:  And the doors that Cheryl mentioned, one of the nice things now is we hit a button and it locks all those doors.  So if something is going on, we can lock it.  What used to happen is we’d have to take a custodian who would spend an hour in the morning going around checking all the doors and an hour at night going around checking all the doors to make sure they were locked.  Now we hit a button and they’re locked.  So it makes me, as a parent, feel a little better that we have some protection there that maybe we didn’t have before.

Unidentified:  Is this school board working with the State to try to get the financing changed?  To me (undecipherable)

Haschak:  It’s ugly.

Unidentified:  It is.

Haschak:  Very ugly.

Unidentified:  They really need to get the people down there working with this.

Haschak:  Yes.  And we do have, at all of our programs we’ve had where you can register.  The proposal right now, the Constitutional Amendment that’s out there is to change the way the State funds.  I will tell you we’ve had a financial person look at finances for us, at Jackson.  We are going to get a little bit more State money, we will not be fixed.  What it will do is elongate the amount of time, we’re hoping, between levies.  But as far as the Jackson, you know, like I said, we’ll get a little bit more money.  We get a little over $3 million, we might get $6 million.  But in relationship to the whole budget, and that would not even take place until the year 2011, and there’s to be a whole committee.  But, yes, we’re working hard to get signatures.  I’ve had the gentlemen from the State Department come in and talk.  Paula had a meeting, we had Kirk Schuring come in and talk about his proposal and then what the Constitutional Amendment is all about.  If for nothing more we need to at least get it on the ballot as far as a Constitutional Amendment to let the legislature know that they have to do something.  Right now their attitude is we’re not hearing enough about it so we don’t need to change.  Four times it’s been ruled unconstitutional and I will tell you since the last ruling, we received less money than before that ruling.  So obviously they didn’t take it very seriously.

The other part, as far as our funding and what’s kind of eroded our funding, is that even 8 years ago now they have open enrollment.  Okay, open enrollment means a student can go to any school that says we’re an open enrollment school.  Massillon would be an open enrollment school, Tuslaw would be an open enrollment school, Perry is an open enrollment school.  What happens is we actually get from the State about $1,500 per student.  If that student decides to go to another school system, $5,400 goes with that student.  Well if a student decides to go to a charter school or an online computer school, that online computer school gets $5,400.  When we get to the bottom line of money from the State, we are right now losing $750,000 a year.  The difference being our enrollment did not drop.  If it would have dropped, by the amount of kids that have gone somewhere, we could have reduced staff.  But we have continued to grow so not only do we have the deduction of $750,000, we also have to hire teachers because our enrollment is continuing to grow.  We know right now and we went through each student and I showed the Board, we have 134 kids that we know of right now that are on open enrollment or a charter school or some other school and we’ve gone through, name by name, and a lot of these students we’ve never seen.  Their parents maybe moved here from another school district and they didn’t want to leave that district.  Or they live real close to the border of Massillon and so they go to Massillon schools.  But those are some of the things that have eroded our budget and about 6 – 8 years ago we did not have that.  But when the State decided that kids could go to whatever school they wanted to go to and then your money went with them, those are some of the things that really have hurt our budget.

Blangger:  Cheryl, we need to say about the amendment, too, one, a positive thing for senior citizens is it writes off the first $40,000 of your taxes.  So if your property is worth $100,000, you pay taxes on $60,000.  That’s a benefit for senior citizens but again it won’t fix Jackson.  It will just lengthen the amount of time we have between levies.

Unidentified:  The first half of 2007 I’m sure you’re very well aware that the tax increase in Jackson Township, mine went up 32%.  I wondered what it was across Jackson Township, how much did the real value go up there.  I know it was 7% across the board in Stark County.

Douglas:  I think its 6.4 was what Jackson, 6.4.

Gonzalez:  Do you live in Lake Cable, sir?

Unidentified:  (undecipherable) wrong things in Jackson.  Mine went up 32%.

Douglas:  That’s the average.

Gonzalez: Do you live in Lake Cable?

Unidentified:  Whatever it was now some of that, a lot of it goes to the State, but some of it does come back to the school district.  Now does that money come in before or after you calculated your 4.5 mills.

Douglas:  We knew there was going to be a reappraisal, so we estimated what we thought it was going to be beforehand and when it actually came out we talked to the auditor to get the number and we were pretty close.  I mean, within a few thousand bucks.

Haschak:  Forty six thousand dollars.

Unidentified:  The auditors couldn’t come up with it.

Douglas:  Right.  So it was in there, that number was in there.

Unidentified:  I have a question.  I was looking over the very nice chart, the fiscal report card.  I found a glaring mathematical error in that.  Has this been brought up at one of the other meetings or not?

Douglas:  Not that I know of.

Unidentified:  Figuring the percentage, if you’re above or below a similar average, looking at current operating millage.  Ours is 42.4, similar district average is 59.07.  That’s an actual millage difference of 16.67 mills.  The extended column all the way to the right tells us that we are 39% below similar average.  In actuality that’s only 28%.  Whoever did all the computations, all the carryouts to the right side are miscalculated.

Gonzalez:  Must have been a non-Jackson graduate.

Haschak:  I’d have to look at that.

Douglas:  Yes, I don’t know.

Unidentified:  It overstates . . .

Haschak:  Is that the cut report?

Douglas:  Yes, but I think, if it overstates, it then that’s wrong.  I guess the message doesn’t change.  I think that at least on the one you just mentioned, whether it’s 28 or 39, we’re still below what the number is.  But I understand what you’re saying.  It sounds like they figured it, maybe based on the wrong denominator in it.  That’s what it looks like.

Unidentified:  They used the Jackson numbers for the denominator.

Douglas:  Instead of the average.

Unidentified: The average administrators’ salary is 6.32 higher than similar district average rather than 5.94.  So it overstates the negative, and kind of pulls down where we’re above things.

Douglas:  The numbers all come off of the State report.  I don’t know how the percentages came in.  I’m pretty sure, at least from when I’ve tested, all the numbers were good, I didn’t go back and redo those percentages.  But I think the actual dollars are right because they come off the State report.  When it says the average millage and the average salary, those are good numbers.

Unidentified:  Oh, sure, right, but I mean you were talking about who was counting the beans or the steaks or the football tickets.  Who’s doing the math on this?  In my opinion, I’m not a math scholar, I’m not like the kid in here that gets a perfect ACT score.  But maybe before this is put out, obviously there won’t be any time for a correction, run this stuff by the basic math instructor or something. To me, I think it’s embarrassing, when I’m not that smart that I can at a glance and say, man, that doesn’t look like we’re 40% below average.  We’re below but it’s you know from being almost 40% to being 28% it’s negative but it’s not as negative and statistically that’s huge.  I want to say has there been a forensic audit of the prior case of the fellow taking the football money from the ticket sales.  Can we talk about that or is that still in litigation?

Gonzalez:  That’s a different case.

Haschak:  That one’s over and gone.

Unidentified:  It’s gone?  Because there was precious little in the paper about that and my simple math is thinking, I don’t know that we got reimbursed enough on that as a district.  You’re looking for money and to be fair to the kids that are in charter schools or elsewhere, you’re still getting your local revenue for people from their parents’ property taxes.

Haschak:  But that’s what makes up the $5,400.  That’s why the . . .

Unidentified:  (undecipherable) a little bit too because you’re averaging $5,700 so for every kid that goes to a charter school you lose $5,400 but you’re picking up $5,700 on the property taxes on the local revenue so actually you’re $300 ahead for every kid that leaves.

Haschak:  If I didn’t have any other students coming in.   The trouble is I do.

Unidentified:  Right, sure.  I understand.  In that particular case, case by case, if everybody leaves the school system, you’re still getting $5,700 per kid that you lose to a charter school.  It’s not quite as disastrous if the kid goes to a charter school.

Haschak:  If we were losing enrollment, you’re right.  We could start non-renewing staff, reducing our staff is what I should be saying, but we’re not, so when that is deducted we’re only getting $1,500 per kid from the State.

Unidentified:  The State.  Right.  But you’re getting (undecipherable).

Haschak:  So.  Yes.  And see that’s where the State’s saying, ‘oh, because of your property valuation you’re considered a wealthy district, so you get to make it up locally’.

Unidentified:  Could we just persuade everyone to go back?  The problem isn’t going to be solved by 100 kids going elsewhere.  Because you have a huge school, say why couldn’t we live with the school was good enough.  Nobody’s driving the same car they were driving four years ago.  Nobody’s saying we shouldn’t have dishwashers or cell phones or anything else, but when it comes to the schools, it’s like everybody suddenly decides they don’t need anything.  I don’t want, I mean, my kids have graduated from Jackson, but I didn’t want them going through a school district that was going to settle for mediocrity.  That’s what we’re going to end up with.

Douglas:  My company moves a lot of people all over the world. and if it’s not the first question it’s the second question when somebody moves into an area, ‘what’s the best schools’. I have yet to have anyone ask me where the cheapest schools to go to is or anything, I mean it’s, that’s what people want for their kids.  They want the best schools.

Unidentified:  I’ve talked to a man who teaches at a university in Singapore, taking a position at Kent State and I was chatting with him and that’s the first thing he asked, where are the best schools and I, because he had heard about Heights, and I said, well, they’re all right but. . .

Meeks:  I’ll tell you from the Township’s standpoint.  It is a concern of ours of the increase in population that we see.  We’ve looked at many options to try to slow that down.  One thing you have to be very careful on is not to see your community stop growing, you must grow smartly and wisely.  But as we go through our talks with residents and prospective residents, the issue of the school system comes up every time.  If you have a family and you have kids, they want the best possible education they can give them.  That is why we’re seeing the success in enrollment that we have to one point but also it hurts us in the end because people with families, they love our community we have the best of everything.  Close to shopping, restaurants, park system, school district, we go hand in hand.  We, here at the Township, when we go out and try to solicit business or keep and retain business in our community we’re there championing for the school’s cause.  We do not want to do anything that hurts the funding of the schools.  And one thing that definitely hurts the bottom line of the schools and eventually all of us is businesses that leave our community.

I think you read in the paper where we have worked very, very diligently in retaining businesses that were close, if not gone, from here.  We’re working right now with a couple businesses that are going to expand here.  The one is going to add well over 800 new jobs.  That’s huge.  The amount that the school district will stand to gain by an expansion of a business of that size is phenomenal.  Here’s the kicker, the State, which doesn’t look at retail as really worth anything, however, we’re losing the Hoover Company, we see a lot of our big businesses that were here years ago pulling up their stakes and moving on.  Times change and technology changes, we have to prepare ourselves.  We have to start thinking like someone said outside the box.  We here in the Township look in the future.  When we spend money here we’re spending it not only to meet our needs today but for future growth.  Because we do not want to come back to our voters and ask for that increase to spend more money on top of what we’ve already spent.  I think you see it with our road improvements, you see it with our facilities, and one thing the Township is very, very proud of is how we spend your dollars.  We are debt free in the Township.  Meaning that any road project, any building that we build, any police cruiser, fire, anything, we budget for it, even retirement, even sick time, any of that, we budget for it ahead to prepare ourselves for that expenditure or we don’t spend it.  But the school district gets hurt because of our success.

One thing that I, and I say it many times, is I would never want to place a person in a corner, to have to choose from being safe in their community, having good roads or buy their medication or funding the school system and we are there.  We live and die by levies in this township that is how a township breathes.  We are charged with looking at options to offset those costs and we’re doing that.  We’re talking to our neighboring communities on how we can help them help us.  If we are successful in entering into cooperative agreements with our neighbors that takes a burden off of your levies, and that is our goal, if we achieve that goal in working with a community then we can attack, I guess that’s a poor choice of words, however, we want to use our retail, our commercial, or industrial areas and draw more monies out of there to help alleviate your problems, our problems, with our levies, our property taxes.  We want to see those go down so that we’re not competing for the same dollars that the school system needs.  And we’re doing that on a daily basis.

The other thing that they’re looking at is there is an ad hoc group that is looking at the pros and cons of incorporation.  Now until those facts and figures are in and they are presented to the residents for an easy read and for you to make that decision, we can’t wait till the eleventh hour.  We know in ’09 the State is going to cut the Township by a little over $3 million in our budget without a generator to offset those revenues.  So we can’t wait till then.  We have to look at ways to offset those cuts because the answer from the State is put on an operational levy.  That’s the wrong answer.  We don’t believe in it.  What we believe in is trying to reduce your property taxes and that’s what we’re committed to.

Haschak:  It’s kind of like one gentleman said to me when the animals go to the same watering hole and it’s dried up, they all start looking at each other a little funny and we don’t want to start doing that.

Unidentified:  I have and this is backtracking a little bit to the conversation that was earlier about where the dollars come from and the dollars that have been lost.  In a meeting that you had with the staff you explained something about the way the State has changed the way you get back the dollars that the district (undecipherable).

Haschak:  Yes, personal tangible tax is what you’re speaking of which affects the Township also and for schools what happened was they basically said, who knows why they picked 2004, and inventories, what businesses in the mall and those places, whenever, like a Buehlers comes in, the inventory there you’ve got a bump in money that you are able to collect and that was part of our success, too, why we were able to not have to ask for new millage like we do at this point in time.  But what happened was they said ‘oh, we’re not going to do that anymore we need to attract more businesses to the State of Ohio, we’re going to create a new tax called the CAT tax.’  Well right away that’s a huge crisis for us because a State tax, as you know, is never good for us.  When we send a dollar down to Columbus we get 12 cents back.  That’s it.  When you do your State Income Taxes that’s how much comes back to Jackson Township for our schools.  Now when you vote a local levy that stays here but as far as State money, no, so when the CAT tax was mentioned we were nervous immediately of what that was going to do.  So actually we do not get growth now on personal tangible tax.  It’s frozen at the 2004 level, so the nice growth that we were seeing, that helped us not have to put new millage on, is now gone for us.  And it’s a reimbursement from the State and not to get real technical, but it has a huge influence on the valuation, property valuation, that is figured for schools.  So now since it’s a reimbursement from the State, it reduces our property valuation, it’s just an all around bad problem for us and I know it is for the Township also, they’re looking at the same problems that we are.

Gonzalez:  It’s going to get worse.  And not only that, the State’s making that up for the Townships, they’re going to hold us harmless.  It’s $1.3 million, I believe the school’s portion is $4 million.  They’re making it up whole for nine years and then it goes away completely.  So we have from now until, it started in 2004 as Cheryl said, the number was frozen at the 2004 number, it declines every year and in the ninth year it goes away.  So the school’s going to be losing $4 million at the end of that ninth year and we will lose $1.3 million.  The State has given us no way of making that up, short of going back for more property taxes, and that’s why all of us up here have been arguing with our legislators to try to change that.

This gentleman back here, I think there’s a lot of people like you out in the Township.  I think there’s a lot of people in this room tonight that just feel that it’s a lot of money, I really can’t afford the money, and maybe you have a fixed income, maybe you don’t, but the reality of it is, there’s not a lot of alternatives at this point.  You can complain about the school being too big or too many administrators or all the things that got us to this situation, but the fact of the matter is we’re at it and the only way to fix it right now is the plan that’s in front of you.  Now maybe that plan, you could make an argument of whether that could change somewhat or not, but a good story I can tell you is about a year ago I had my house, a couple years ago, I had my house reappraised because I wanted to get a better interest rate on my home loan.  And the gentleman came down here from Akron and he looked at my house and he appraised it and he said could I buy your house from you.  I said well, no, it’s not for sale and the reason he said that was he had three children and he didn’t want to send his kids to the Akron City School District.  He was paying for them to go to Akron St. Vincent St. Mary’s’ a private school.  And his argument was to get a public school like Jackson’s.  They’re very comparable and in most cases Jackson’s better than them.  So he said, you know, what I pay in property taxes, you think is a lot.  Try paying the tuition of the private school.  It’s a lot more, all out.  So you know, that’s a great deal for those of us that have kids in school and I understand there’s some of you that don’t, but again, no matter how much we dislike the taxes, no matter how much we might not be able to afford them, we don’t have a lot of alternatives at this point.  The one’s that are going to get hurt is the kids is what it amounts to.

Douglas:  One of the things I point out, too, is I mean, one of the good things about this year of looking at the levies and going through it, I mean, it has made us look at budgets and look at things.  Last year we cut $1.8 million out of our budget.  This year, the next school year, we’re going to cut $700,000 more out.  So we’ve cut $2.5 million out, we’ve reduced 3 administrative FTE’s going into next year that we didn’t have this year.  Part is because we’ve heard from people after the elections and doing these coffees that you need to reduce FTE’s, you need to reduce expense, don’t just keep coming to us and ask for more and more money if you guys aren’t willing to do some things in your house.  We think we’ve done that.  The issue will always be people are going to say well you can always keep cutting, you can keep cutting, and you may be able to but we think we’re at the point now where a lot more cuts are really going to start affecting the kids in the classrooms, whether we let the class sizes get bigger, whether we eliminate bussing, those type of things.  We think we’ve cut out as much of the fat as we can.  Is there more?  There’s always a little more, I’m not going to sit up here and say we’ve done a perfect job there’s nothing else, but at the end of the day, we think we’ve cut, you know, $2.5 million in the last two years and so we’ve tried to respond to the comments from people, don’t just keep asking us for more taxes, do something inside to do it.

Unidentified:  As an employee of Jackson (undecipherable) I taught in two different districts before I came here and when I started teaching here I was amazed by the difference in Jackson versus the other two districts I’ve been in.  I mean I was an insider, you know, you always know once you’re inside, they give you (undecipherable) on the outside, but you have the inside and I saw from the top down.  I mean from the administrators down to the janitors how many people were (undecipherable) expectations, the way there’s follow through, checks and balances, I mean, I had never been (undecipherable), you’re supposed to, never did.  I thought I was in a good job but I realized when I came here how much more I had to learn by doing that, I mean, you had opportunities (undecipherable) district come together we’ve got a teachers meeting, really work together and get on the same page about what’s going on rather than having a competition among the buildings, you know, (undecipherable).  It’s not like that because they give us those opportunities to come together and share that (undecipherable).  So that even when the kids were moving during the building, they’re able to pick up where they left off.  I think, I mean, the respect factor, from the kids, the parents, the teachers, and everybody, I was so impressed I told my husband we have got to move to Jackson Township.  My kids are going, I didn’t have kids yet, I was pregnant, but I knew then that we had to move here because of the way it was and it wasn’t just a shell or talk, it was real.

I just give Cheryl and Bob all the credit because they’re juggling so many things all the time and you do your job the best you can and you just hope that everybody is going to do it and everybody is, from observations to follow ups, to meetings, to notes given back from you.  I just think they just try to cover as much as, I don’t think there’s really any stone left unturned, but everything they do from curriculum to I mean any decision and I just, I don’t know, I feel bad because I think someone will get cut and some things you have the technicality of enough is going to be perfect it’s just that (undecipherable).  But the (undecipherable) at the bottom line is the kids.  I mean what’s being offered to them and the opportunities they’re given.  I’m just so grateful my kids get to go here, I mean, as a teacher and a parent, I just have nothing but positive to say.  And, too, the priorities have always been on the kids.  Just as a very practical example of that look at the schools where the children spend their days and look at the administration building where Cheryl spends her day.  Priorities have always been the money is for the kids and (undecipherable).  I’ve been in the District for 15 years (undecipherable).

Haschak:  I didn’t pay them, either, but God bless you guys.

Unidentified:  (Undecipherable) of all three districts I get paid the least here.  I do have a Master’s Degree, my other one was offered, I think at the time (undecipherable).  But here I’m willing to pay for my Master’s, I’m willing to do all the things they need because I know, I respect (undecipherable) Board, and what they believe in.  Brooke, that wasn’t always the case (undecipherable).

Haschak:  Yes.

Unidentified:  I’ve already heard that there have been some people on the staff laid off for next year if this levy does not pass.  Now who gets laid off?  What is the priority?  Who goes, who stays.

Haschak:  Okay, for next year I had a part time assistant principal at the middle school and we will no longer have that position.  It had been a full time position the year before and we had cut it in half.  Now next year we will not have it.  We have a vocational director that we will not have next year.  We have an assistant principal at Strausser that will be a part time position for next year.  We had adult ed which we even did last year, a gal that did adult education full time for us, we now have her in the distance learning lab and we narrowed down our adult ed program.  We have an assistant transportation supervisor that we will not have next year.  She will be coming back to help at the beginning of the year and then that position will go away.  We have an OWE and an OWA program at the high school which serviced small amounts of kids, we’ve eliminated those positions.  I’m trying to think through all the different positions that we’ve eliminated.  We’ve tried hard to hang on to our programs, not to make the class sizes huge, because ultimately what Jackson is all about is excellence in the educational program for kids.  And we’re trying very hard not to affect what happens for kids on a day to day basis.  That’s the most important part about what we do.  And that’s what we’re trying to hang on to.

Gonzalez:  If it fails, wasn’t that the second part of your question?  If it fails, what will happen?

Haschak:  If it fails, those positions that I mentioned will not come back.

Gonzalez:  Will there be further layoffs?

Haschak:  If the levy fails, we’re going to have to eventually start cutting teachers, and having larger class sizes.  We cannot cut enough anymore to cover $3 million, there’s just no way that we can do it.  And you’re looking at laying off 50 to 60 staff people immediately with another round of staff and that would be unmanageable in a classroom.  Yes.

Unidentified:  I meant to bring that article in that you are referring to from last week’s Respository about the possible layoffs and their salaries and everything and the vocational director, I think the salary was only $18,000 a year.

Haschak:  That would include all of his benefits, his retirement money, his extra days that he works during the year.  It’s everything that would go into a salary.  It isn’t his. . .

Unidentified:  He’s the vocational director for the entire system or just the high school.

Haschak:  Yes.  Vocational is just at the high school.  Part of that is funded by the State, not all of it.  It used to, in fact all of our vocational programs were totally supported by the State.  That no longer happens.

Unidentified:  Is there some way, I mean, that sounds like an important position, could it be a part time. . .

Haschak:  One of our assistant principals is going to be picking that up at the high school and curriculum-wise we’re going to be working with our curriculum director, one of them, to work on that.

Unidentified:  (Indecipherable).

Haschak:  It’s for potential kids that would drop out of school.

Douglas:  Occupational Work Adjustment.

Haschak:  And Occupational Work Experience and those are small numbers in the classrooms because we know those kids need extra help.  So, again, we’re trying to look at ways to address that issue.  I will say, too, that one of our curriculum positions will be gone next year also.  So we’ve tried to look at the whole K to 12 gamut and say let’s try to leave the classrooms alone if we can.  Yes.

Unidentified:  Two and a half years if I’m not mistaken, this all off the record, two and a half years ago.

Gonzalez:  Sorry, Jeff.

Unidentified:  We passed a library levy, we passed a levy for underprivileged kids, foster kids, we passed a police levy, we passed a fire levy, we’ve passed a levy for Strausser, and we passed a levy for the high school.  I count seven levies.  Well, we voted.  Now, Strausser’s not going away, Sauder’s not going away, Jackson High School’s not going away, Amherst’s not going away and Lake Cable’s not going away.  The buildings are built, the bricks have been lain, and it’s over with.  We’re sitting here wasting time talking about what we’re doing at this high school, what we’re doing at Lake Cable.  The buildings are built, they’re done, whether or not it was a mistake or not, I don’t know.  But the buildings are built, we’re going to live with those buildings.  What we need to do is we need to come together as a community.  This Board with this community, these Trustees with this community.  Time is running out.  May 9th is going to be answer day.

Now here’s what I’m saying.  I called the fire department, my son stopped breathing this winter, they come out, and they gave him first class medical attention.  They take him to Aultman and they stayed there for two hours with him.  First class.  Accountability, respectability, that’s when the fire levy passes.  Police levy, it’s getting better.  There’s not one person in this room going to say that the education at Jackson High School isn’t tops.  There’s not one person here could say it’s not.  Our kids are getting an excellent education.  We’ve got to add something to that.  We, the people of Jackson, let me speak for myself, I want quality education at a fair price.  Now, what is a fair price?  I don’t what that answer is.  But I do know this, it hurts me to no end that we, as elected officials, and I will harp on it and I’m going to harp on it, and I’m going to harp on it, the pay to play issue, it’s wrong and it needs to go away.  Now after the election, if it passes, then great.  If it doesn’t pass, then we have to go back to another way of trying to get it passed.  Now is our Board of Education going to sit down with the community, the (undecipherable) community?  Do they want it one sided, do you want it their way, do they want it the communities’ way, do they want to do it this way, do they want to do it that way?  What I’m saying is simple, the levy’s going to keep coming back.  We have to find a way to keep this community and rally it together and everybody is going to have to give and take a little bit.  Everybody.  And that’s the only way we’re going to get it passed.  Senior citizens are going to have to give a little bit, teachers are going to have to give a little bit, administration’s going to have to give a little bit, I’m going to have to give a little bit, the Trustees, everybody’s going to have to give a little bit, but when we come to you and we ask that certain things be done, if we don’t get a response, a verbal response, any type, then I’m offended with that.  I’m offended and my kids have to $350 to play sports.  Yes, I’m offended to that.   And I will be offended at the next Board meeting and the next Board meeting and the next Board meeting.  We’ve got state of the art facilities.  No doubt about it.  We’ve got state of the art classrooms, we’ve got state of the art teachers.  My kids have never had a bad teacher at Jackson, never.  But to pay to play in Jackson Township as rich a community as this is?  No.  No, it’s wrong.  It’s wrong.  These kids deserve to play sports without having to pay.  I don’t blame Cheryl, I don’t blame anybody, I’m just telling you, that’s what the community’s saying.  The majority of them are saying.  You have the most beautiful facilities in the world, our kids have to pay $350 to play.  Now you’re telling me if the levy passes you’re going to do away that.  Come May 9th, we’ll find out if that’s true.  I’m not saying I’m against the levy.  I’m saying the kids deserve to play sports without having to pay.

Blangger:  May I respond to that?

Unidentified:  Yes.

Blangger:  Please.  There isn’t a person sitting here who is happy about the pay to play or participate.  There’s not one Board member, there’s not one administrator, this levy isn’t about pay to play.  This levy is about educating kids.  And this Board has only so many dollars and the choice with sports is you do away with all sports, which this Board will never do, or you start eliminating some sports because you can’t afford them all, certainly not a happy prospect.  Or you ask the people who are participating to share in the costs so that you can fund all the programs.  Which is what we chose to do.  I don’t like it, none of us like it, no parents like it, it is not a reason to vote against a school levy.  We’re here to educate children and this money is to educate kids.  And we have said ‘gee, if we’re given more funds we will eliminate that pay to play because we are strong believers in the sports programs’.  We see great value in them in teaching all sorts of things.  We know our busiest kids are our best kids.  Our football, basketball, our tennis, our golf, these aren’t the kids who are having problems.  We love having them participate.  We tried to cut back the expense because we know it’s a hardship, we’ve capped it, we’ve lowered it at the middle school but this levy is about educating kids.  This levy’s about keeping the teachers Cheryl’s talking about and we’re not willing to give up a lot of teachers to fully fund the sports program.  So we’re hoping the levy passes and that we can eliminate it, but if not, we’re going to have to ask the community or the people who are using the sports programs to help share in the cost.  Not a happy thing, not something we want to do, it’s a priority choice, we want to keep them, and we need help supporting them.

Manns:  Other school districts have had pay to play long before Jackson did.  It’s not like something new that’s never happened before in high schools.  Other schools have had pay to play.  Isn’t that right?

Blangger:  Yes.  And we have had it once before when we were in a financial crunch in the 90’s, I think early 90’s.  In fact, Cheryl, am I not correct that some schools, what percentage, do we know, I mean there are schools that have pay to play fees, yes.

Haschak:  Yes.  I don’t know what that percentage is, but I have called other schools around the State now because they’re running into the same issue.  Some schools now continue and have, you know, they’ve lowered it after their levies have passed to $100.  And in most cases that’s usually what it is, but to keep their athletic program going that’s what some schools have done.  There are a number of schools that don’t.

Manns:  (Indecipherable) pay to play (indecipherable).

Haschak:  No, they just implemented that when they were having trouble with passing their levy.

Gonzalez:  If I could interject for one second.  I just have to get them on the records so they’ll understand who’s talking.  Marian Manns, school board member and Tom Winkhart has joined. Just for the record.  Thank you.

Meeks:  One thing, Tom, first of all I thank you for coming.  I know you’re no stranger to the Board of Education.  Tom brings up a lot of issues that need to be worked on once we pass this levy.  But Tom I think you’re seeing something right now that has never been done before and that is, the Board of Education is reaching out to all of us.  Whatever position we hold in this Township, they’re reaching out to us.  They came to us to ask if we’d participate, the Township officials and the Chamber of Commerce, to help answer and get this levy passed, answer questions.  So they are reaching out, they are concerned, we’re concerned and you’re concerned.  You bring up some very interesting and important questions that need to have an answer to.  But you’ve never, in any conversation I’ve had with you, ever questioned the integrity of the quality of education here.  I think we all can say that it is second to none and that is why I agreed and this Board agreed to band with the Board of Education to try to answer the questions that need to be answered in order to get a yes vote.  Now does that mean that if once we pass this on Tuesday that everything’s going to be hunky-dory, absolutely not.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to build the fences that have been torn down to build the integrity, the trust that we need to have in our school board members.  I hear too much of the negatives and personal attacks on all of us.  There’s a lot of perception, we’re all victims of perception, whether it’s positive or negative.  What we need to do is ban together and work through that stuff and I think that’s what you’re saying we’re doing here.  And I will work on anything that you ask me to, Tom, in order to improve the relationship, the quality or whatever else we need to do to get this passed.

Todaro:  What I’m trying to say is of all the issues out there, I’m not complaining about anything, I’m not complaining about the education my kids are getting, I’m not complaining about the schools, I’m not complaining about the schools (undecipherable), I’m not complaining about the busses, I’m not complaining about any of that.  So you’ve got me about 90%.  I’m taking one issue that I’m against and willing to work with the Board.  I don’t think I’m going to get 100% of it but what I’m trying to say is will you work with me or work with people like me to try to help.  A lot of these parents out here are struggling right now with that pay to play.  Now they’re changing it from pay to play or pay to participate, now they’re calling it a tax.  Now you can call it, they’re saying they’re paying X number of dollars in property taxes and they’re paying for pay to play.  Now you can call it pay to play or pay to participate, you can call it whatever you want, the money is coming out of your pocket and it’s going over here, it’s going somewhere else.  Is it a tax?  I don’t know.

Douglas:  Tom, I’ll answer, and then I know there’s a question over here.  You only get one vote.  You and I have talked about that. You get a yes vote, you get a no vote.  If you want to see pay to play go away, then in theory you should be supporting the levy.

Todaro:  I didn’t say I wasn’t supporting the levy.

Douglas:  I didn’t say you did.  I’m just telling you.  To say that I’m going to vote against the levy because I’m upset about pay to play, it’s going to be hard for pay to play to go away if we don’t pass the levy.  And so, that’s all I’m saying, that you need to think about.

Gonzalez:  If we get everybody 90%, Ken, we’re in good shape.

Douglas:  Well, if we get90% of the vote we’re in good shape.

Meeks:  I’ll bet Tom Todaro will vote yes on the levy.  Do I have your commitment, Tom?

Todaro:  I said 90% of what they do at Jackson, I’m backing.

Meeks:  And that’s a yes vote.

Todaro:  That’s pretty doggone (indecipherable).  You know, I mean, I could, (indecipherable) hear from a lot of people.  I’m 90% behind them.  You know what irritates me.

Meeks:  We know that, Tom.

Todaro:  (Indecipherable)

Unidentified:  There is a problem there with pay to play, but it’s going across the board.  Every club has to pay to participate.  And the band is going to be (indecipherable) pay even more.  So we’re going to have this across the board, now I’m going to presume, and I’ll ask the question, if we pass the levy, we have the funds, that would go across the board or are we going to restrict it try to get rid of pay to play?

Haschak:  The band would not be paying.  I know they’re going to be paying and dearly this year with, we even raised the fee for band camp, and Doc and I, poor Doc, he’s over there every day pleading his case, God bless him, and we talked again today, and the band and sports, we’ve said no, we’re not going to have that continue if we pass our levy.  The clubs, I will say, speech and debate, is one we need to go back and seriously look at.  That’s expensive for us but $150 is expensive for kids.  Most of our clubs are a minimal amount of money, basically all we did is a teacher or whoever runs the club, is paid a stipend, we just divided that out and for the most part that’s a minimal amount of money.  More than likely, we will keep those. And the reason is the total amount of those is about $130,000, well, that’s two teachers and more.  To me, it’s a minimal amount and I would rather put teachers in the classroom and I really think that’s what we have to do.  That part would stay.

A lot of the classroom fees were already there, calculators people bought.  I met with North Canton because North Canton has always charged for workbook fees.  It never went away, it’s always been there.  So those fees, yes, are there but for the most part we were paying those anyway we just call them fees now.  But band and pay to participate in speech in particular we are going to go back and get rid of those.  Speech we have to look at what we can do there.  Like I said, it’s very expensive because unfortunately it’s a good thing and a bad thing when you’re successful you have to travel more places with more busses.  So we do kind of have a deal of where we’re only going to go to so many of those.  But I know, God bless the advisor, she’s killed herself to raise $30,000 to help pay some of those fees and entry fees that they have for speech.  So I tell her we will, if we can pass our levy, we’ll go back and look at that.  It won’t be $150 where kids have to, and that’s the part we’re struggling with, kids are making horrible choices as a kid, because I’ve said it several times, but, you know, a grandfather told me that his grandson worked hard and saved his allowance so he could play two sports.  That’s not right.  Kids are worrying about what can I, you know, which sport should I pick, oh, okay, I’m not going to go out.  Well the bottom line is they’re going to find something to do.  It’s going to be the mall, or it’s going to be sitting at home or they’ll find something to do and I don’t think it’s going to be a good thing.  And there’s just too many great life lessons that we can learn through athletics.  Now having been there myself and my own daughter, winning and losing that’s part of life and it’s a great way to learn when you’re in high school.  How to lose gracefully, how to win gracefully.  How to take criticism.  Huge, especially kids that don’t have other siblings, they’re tops in the house, well, it’s kind of nice to have them in athletics because they learn how to take criticism.  There are just so many great lessons that you can learn from athletics and we don’t like doing that.

Unidentified:  How did my Dad’s classes, trips they take to Hawaii and Phoenix, my granddaughter wants to go to Phoenix this December and she cried for three days when her mother told her she could not go.  Now we’re supposed to adopt her, and send her – grandma.  (Indistinguishable) grandma.  And we can’t do it.  So why do they have to go to Phoenix and Hawaii and wherever, Alaska, wherever they go.  Why is it?

Haschak:  Well, I don’t have a good answer other than that it’s a culminating event.  They do have a lot of fundraisers so they can try to raise most of the money.  I do know a number of kids work really hard and raise most of the money so that they can go on the trip.  But it’s kind of one of those life changing events just like our six grade camp.  I know we’re struggling with what to do with that.  And again, the discussion has been let’s raise the cost of camp.  And there are going to be kids that aren’t going to have the money to go to camp and those are not good things that we like to do.  I think in light of all the other things, part of the problem, too, is our fundraisers are fundraising each other.  And that’s not good.  We had three reverse raffles and I was broke, all the Board was, too.

Douglas:  I won one of the them, though.

Haschak:  Somehow, he keeps winning, there’s something not right here. But anyway, you know, I had to buy three reverse raffle tickets, well, now, we’re fundraising against each other.  That’s craziness.  So we need to get over this hump, let’s hope we do.

Unidentified:  I have, I don’t know if I can express it real good, but you were talking about the boy that worked two jobs to play two sports and how, I don’t think it came across, that that is so hard on the child.  Have the kids, are they being taught or told that they’re out there to help the other people, too?  That there are people, there’s people who can’t afford their taxes. They’re young, I mean, you know, if sports can keep them out of trouble, I understand that.  But a job isn’t going to, you know, that could help them, too.  And I just don’t see for the kids, for the kids, for the kids, I guess.  The education, definitely.  But the extra curricular activities, I’m just not so sure on that.  They can’t step up and (indecipherable).  You know there was a neat letter to the editor last night so (indecipherable).  She was saying this extra curricular and what’s wrong with mowing the yard, baby sitting, and doing things like that.  Are the kids, you know, just in the homes being taught that there’s people out there, older people,  younger people, who can’t pay their taxes or can’t go, you know.  It’s not just the kids that are (indecipherable).

Haschak:  Sure.

Unidentified:  And if they’ve got (indecipherable), this is a lesson for them to learn out of school, that this is about you.

Unidentified:  (Indecipherable) economics unit (indecipherable) public.  That’s part of the economics unit and then the money you’re bringing (indecipherable) how is that money going to be spent.  And this year because you didn’t have the money for field trips they decided that would (indecipherable) somebody else to go on the field trip (indecipherable) learn about the (indecipherable) science.

Unidentified:  They used that when they worked for a field trip and it was a great opportunity for them and in the classroom they were able to (indecipherable).  They had paperwork every step of the way – from buying it, paying off the loan, (indecipherable).

Haschak:  I think our kids are great volunteer kids, too.  A number of our programs, part of the curriculum require the kids to give back to the community.  And I know the seniors will have a great time but they spend a day cleaning and doing whatever anybody needs in the community.  Habitat for Humanity is huge.  In fact, we have to tell kids they only get to go down on one or two Saturdays because we have so many kids that volunteer.  But I would say, most of our kids, when they’re juniors and seniors, I would say a large percentage of our kids do work.  And I’m sure people have other perceptions, but they do.  A lot of our kids sometimes I’m concerned that they’re working too many hours and their priority needs to be school and not a full time job.  But I will say our kids are great volunteer kids, they’re there.  You ask for something, they’re there, a race for the cure or run for life or whatever, we have great kids and you know that.  We really do.

Kody:  I just wanted to kind of stop a minute and say, I guess the basic gist of this school levy comes down to the kids and educating the kids.  You know, I went to Jackson and I graduated seven years ago and now I teach there, so I’ve seen both sides of the spectrum.  And I mean, the time playing sports in high school, I mean it was an invaluable and great lesson and everything, but the education is what took me through in order for me to come back and teach here.  And what I’m seeing now at school, I mean, I teach 8th grade, okay?  Eighth grade American History, when I was in 8th grade we had 395 people in my class.  Next year there’s going to be over 550 kids in 8th grade.  There’s that many kids, there are no more teachers, but there are that many kids.  And when you’re talking about this levy in particular, we’re talking about laying off teachers, we’re not talking about cutting sports, or extra curricular, we’re talking about cutting staff and in the end the only person going to get hurt is those kids.

I came back here, not for the huge whopping pay check that everybody thinks I get.  I came back because I love my community and love the kids here.  And I mean I would be willing to give up anything, you know, and right now I stand in my hallway and the two teachers next to me, both of the programs are going to be cut in the next year.  And I’m thinking about those kids who are getting extra help in the Pathfinders and supposed to be in that class and getting some help.  They’re not going to get the help they need next year.  They’re going to be mainstreamed and maybe with, you know, with 550 kids with two social studies teachers instead of three, so say you (indecipherable) attention that they need in order to succeed you’re actually pushing them farther back than if they were in that classroom this year.  And the bottom line is when we’re voting next week, we’re not voting, you know, for a huge salary, we’re not voting, the pay to play, sure, let’s get rid of it, the bottom line is the kids’ education is what matters and that’s what we’re voting on.

I mean, I hear people complain about the school, the administrators, all that.  We cut almost everything we can and as a teacher I see it first hand.  When I walk out my door next year and to my left, those two teachers won’t be there anymore, those two programs won’t be there anymore.  And who does that hurt in the end – the students.  I mean, it’s the kids and, I mean, that’s why I teach, that’s why I got into it.  And I don’t want to see them getting hurt because we keep holding a grudge over some building that was built two years ago.  I mean it’s them that we have to worry about now, that’s what we’re voting for.  We’re not voting for all these extra things to do, we’re voting for their education.  That’s what’s on the line here.  Not all that other stuff that everybody seems to be (indecipherable).  So I thought Marian made a great point by saying this levy is about a child’s education because it truly is and this is one time that it’s truly just about the kids and making sure they get the education.  I mean I came back here, I did everything I could to come back and teach at Jackson because it’s such a great community, such a great school district.  I could have chosen anywhere I wanted when I graduated from college.  Where did I choose to live?  Jackson Township.  Why?  Because when I get married this summer I want to have kids and raise them here and send them to the schools.  Because that’s what this is about.  Building on our children, so they can come back and (indecipherable).  So that is what (indecipherable).

Gonzalez:  If I could chime in on that for one second, most of the people in the room know that that is my son.  And you know there are a lot of people that don’t vote for the levy and they have a lot of reasons as has been said.  The pay to play or the buildings are too big or the administration, all those things.  But I think, truthfully, the bottom line is most people vote no for one reason, they feel it’s too expensive, they can’t afford it and they look for every other reason to say no.  You know what?  He is one of the reasons that I believe in saying yes.  And I don’t mean to play this up, and he’s probably going to get embarrassed but I know this week he was called by an elected official who offered him a job that he’d be guaranteed the rest of his life.  There’s no chance of getting laid off in that office.  Double the salary he’s making and he turned the job down.  I think he was crazy myself but he turned the job down.  And I said why would you do that, Kody?  He said because I went to school to be a teacher, I want to be a teacher, and I want to help kids.  And I’m thinking to myself, wow, to give up half of your salary, that’s a lot to do.  And I think we have a lot of people like that in Jackson and the problem is, we fail this levy, we’re going to lose people like that.  It’s going to be the young ones that get laid off, the ones that have been there the shortest and then he’s probably going to have to take the other job and we’re going to lose him as a teacher.  And we’re probably going to lose a lot of other ones like him as a teacher.

Mark:  I’d like to say a couple things to the people that don’t have kids in the school district.  I’m sure some of you at one time had kids that were in the school district.  Today it costs $104,000 to educate a kid from K through 12.  I would imagine back when you were raising your kids, you probably didn’t pay your fair share of taxes to educate your child because there were other people in the community that were also helping you.  Well, now it’s your turn to help us because you’re asking us to, more or less because you’re retired, to help pay for your Social Security, okay, and I understand how that works.  But we’re also asking you to help our kids so that they can in turn.  We’re all part of the community, so I’m saying to you, you know, think about when you educated your kids and did you pay your fair share.  And chances are, you probably didn’t.  Okay, so it’s kind of come back to what you didn’t do earlier in life for your kids.  So I guess you know the people who don’t have kids need to think about all those kids that were educated back when you were (indecipherable), too.

Unidentified:  I’m sitting in the press section because I didn’t know where to sit.  I just wanted to say very quickly, when my wife and I moved here a year ago when I retired, and we (indecipherable) any kids.  We’re going to vote yes next week because when we visited the school system we see great teachers, great administrators, and when we look in their eyes we believe they’re doing everything they can to cut the budget, make it tighter and educate the kids.  I believe in extra curricular activities, I think one of the things we’ve lost is educating the whole child and the extra curricular activities are part of that, sports, arts, the whole (indecipherable).  I think this school system tries to do that.  I just wanted to say, I’m voting yes.

Haschak:  Thank you.  (Indecipherable) believe in the arts, right?
 
Meeks:  90%.

Pizzino:  Anyone else?  Is there anyone else?

Douglas:  No more questions?  Well thank. . .

Felicia:  A little bit more about the retirement, I’m sorry, the health care that you announced.  Could you tell me about the (indecipherable) what you estimate that will save you this year per year?

Haschak:  Well, I hate to just throw out a number there.  I’d have to sit down with you with our budget, but we know it’s, we figured out budget based on that.  We’d still know that even with passing this levy our budget will be tight.  But we’re most appreciative to the teachers to help us with that, and administrators, that would be everybody in our district.

Felicia:  And will this still continue to make the 180 that was in the previous contracts?

Haschak:  That was only for a brand new teacher and no.

Felicia:  They will not (indecipherable).

Haschak:  Because they’ll be paying a fee.

Felicia:  And are there any other wage changes in the acknowledgement?  (Indecipherable).

Haschak:  Not really.  Not really.  Again, I keep repeating myself but I do want to thank the teachers that are here.  That was hard, that was a hard thing.  It’s not fun to ask people to give back but I do appreciate what they did.

Unidentified:  I have taught in the school district and I have never voted against a levy and we’ve been living here for 50 years.  So I have never voted against a levy.

Haschak:  Thank you.

Douglas:  Thank you.

Meeks:  Anyone else?

Unidentified:  Not a question but I just want to get, the pay to play or pay to participate, did you say was $130,000 a year.  Did I miss that.

Douglas:  No, I think she said if it was going to be $100 a person it would be about $130,000 a year.  What it is now, it’s around $500,000 a year, is what we take in from pay to play is what we estimated.

Unidentified:  (Indistinguishable)

Douglas:  And how we came up, a lot of meetings have asked, how did you come up with $350.  It’s basically about one half the cost, if you take all the sports and add them together, divided by how many people are in it, it works out to a little over $600 a kid.  So we thought, you know we kind of heard from some people the kid should pay everything, we heard from other people, the kid shouldn’t pay anything.  We kind of tried to compromise and that’s where we came up with the $350.  It brings in about a half million dollars a year.  As long as we don’t lose a lot of kids, but we’re seeing right now, and that’s one of the reasons we’re looking at it, is there’s a couple sports, especially at the middle school, we’re really seeing that participation go down.  Well then all of a sudden, we’re not going to be getting a half million dollars from it, but we haven’t reduced our expenses as much.

Unidentified:  Well, I (indecipherable) the numbers.  My son was in pay to play for almost 12 years.  When it got up to over $14,000 that I paid to play and I quit counting.  It was worth it and I appreciate you (indecipherable).  There has to be a way to get these kids, but I think it was worth every cent of it but it just seems, you talk about the community getting together, there should be some type of a fundraising thing to help get these kids.  Offhand, I’d much rather, I wouldn’t like any increase in taxes, I’d much rather give my 6% to some kid that couldn’t play otherwise, than to give it to (indecipherable) teachers. But that’s just my thought on the thing.  I think the kids will participate in some (indecipherable).  (Indecipherable), the Ohio Athletic Association for 31 years so I understand the value of sports in developing the kids.  It would just seem that there could be some type of an outside fundraiser to lessen the burden.  (Indecipherable).

Douglas:  We’ve got some great booster clubs and, like Cheryl said, there’s been a lot of reverse raffles and things like that where they take that money and do stuff for the kids, whether it’s help pay for the uniforms and do some of that stuff.  But we hear what you’re saying.

Meeks:  Okay, anyone else?

Haschak:  I’d like to thank everybody for coming and again the Trustees for having us.  Thank you very much.

Meeks:  You’re welcome and I want to thank all of you for your interest, being here tonight and all your comments.  I want to thank Ruthanne and, on behalf of the Board of Trustees, thank you very much and, please, once we pass this on Tuesday, we need to continue these talks so we do work together on all the issues that face us in the Township.  Have a good night.

Meeks moved and Burger seconded a motion to adjourn.