Superintendent's Message

Dear Lakeside Community:

For the past number of months, the Plummer-Worley School District Board of Trustees and the administration have been deliberating on the need for Lakeside Schools to run a supplemental levy like has been done the past number of years. Heading into 2021 the district was prepared to run the usual levy in order to continue supporting the efforts of keeping class sizes small, providing counseling services to our students, supporting our athletes and their programs, addressing a number of facilities-related concerns and many other programs.

Shortly after the first of the year, the district was notified of additional federal funds headed our way as a result of COVID-19 relief. The relief was intended to support our students and our taxpayers. The ongoing discussion with the board has been about whether these federal funds would be sufficient to cover our necessary ongoing expenses. In other words, take the place of our levy. During the February board meeting, the board decided to delay the Levy election to May of 2021 and allow themselves additional time to study the matter and determine how those funds are allowed to be spent.

Although schools are typically willing to receive additional dollars for improvements and ongoing expenses, the board voted this past Monday night to keep the tax burden as low as possible through the remainder of the year and reintroduce the levy in 2022. It is important to the board that the district be good stewards of what we have and not expend resources unnecessarily. There are many needs in the district, but this is not the time to do it, especially when it is still tax dollars being used, except in this case it is federal dollars.

Barring some unforeseen circumstance, the district will not be running the traditional levy this year. In the event additional resources are available via federal means, the district will use these resources to repair our facilities in our buildings since some of these systems (i.e. Heating Systems) have outlived their “life expectancy” and starting to fail.

We want to thank the community for your continued support and will let you know if additional resources come forward and how the district might fully utilize those funds.

Respectfully,
Russ Mitchell, Superintendent