District 118 Budget Passed; Gateway Family Services Coming to Mark Denman

The District 118 School Board passed their 2022-2023 budget during Wednesday night’s meeting.  In a nutshell, it’s a budget of $92 million in revenues and $93 million in expenses.  Superintendent Dr. Alicia Geddis says the school board’s decision to go into reserves to help with construction projects a couple years ago has been especially helpful during the COVID struggles.  And, of course, so has the COVID relief money for schools, known as ESSER funding.  But at the same time, those ESSER funds won’t be around forever.  Although Dr. Geddis says, she’s hoping they can be stretched out a bit.

AUDIO: The National Superintendents Organization has petitioned the federal government to allow us to extend in using those moneys until about 2025, I believe.  And so I did sign that petition, and so hopefully they will grant us the ability to be able to use that money until 2025.  But we don’t expect more.

Also Wednesday night, a $139,900 expense was approved for Mark Denman Elementary to welcome the help of Gateway Family Services of Potomac into their building.  A similar move was made last spring to bring their services to North Ridge.  Mark Denman principal Stacie Sollars says Gateway’s counseling work will be good for especially the younger children, who often find themselves already fighting an uphill battle, coming out of the major COVID years.

AUDIO: You know our kindergarten and first graders, they were brought up and raised kind of in the “year of the masks,” right?  And so they have a hard time sometimes reading people’s facial cues, or social cues, so that’s some of the things that we’re seeing.  You know they just haven’t been out in the public like most normal years.  They’re just lacking some skills, and we need a little help, helping them learn them.

In a theme similar to last Friday’s special board meeting, where district extensions to educational support programs such as “It Takes a Village” and “Project Success” were approved, Sollars is hoping that through grants and creative fundraising, the use of a program like Gateway Family Services will be able to continue; once extra resources such as ESSER funds are no longer available.

Also during Wednesday’s District 118 Board meeting, a motion was passed placing Northeast Elementary back on a traditional school calendar for the 2023-2024 school year.  This is being done as a necessity, allowing some remodeling work to be taken care of while students and staff are safely out of the way.