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Montrose County School District RE-1J In Need Of Money

by KREX News Room
by Courtney Griffin

Story Created: Feb 28, 2013 at 6:42 PM MDT

Story Updated: Feb 28, 2013 at 7:25 PM MDT

MONTROSE, Colo.- Officials with the Montrose County School District RE-1J, say their students are falling behind from the lack of money that's available.

The Community School Improvement Team (CSIT), is looking to possibly raise taxes to help fund more resources and technology, to improve student achievement.

The Superintendent, Mark McHale, said they have a lot of room for improvement and they need some help from the community.

CSIT are proposing to receive $3.28 million to help better the education system.

"Losing over $7 million dollars in funding over the course of the last few years has left us scrambling to find some different resources. We're looking at our community for local support," said Mindy Baumgardner, communication and special project coordinator with the Montrose County School District RE-1J.

Some folks say the best way to go about getting that money would be through raising property and/or sales tax.

"Our two options to fund it really are a mill levy override, or a sales tax initiative. If we were to go to a mill levy override to get $3.28 million dollars, we'd be looking for an average house hold in Montrose to increase around $6 a month," said Baumgardner.

The money would be used to get teachers more updated school books, and technology, and to make schools more safe and have smaller classroom sizes with more facilities.

"They don't have even the basic supplies that they need to be able to do their jobs. To be able to make copies, to be able to have textbooks; we've got social studies and science books that are
over ten years old that haven't been updated because we don't have the money for that," said Baumgardner.

Officials say their next step is to revise the plan and have it on the ballot come November.

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old farm girl of the 50's said on Saturday, Mar 2 at 6:20 PM

What happened to the studen'ts bringing their own school suppies? What happened to the high school students providing their own books? Back in the late 40's & early 50's we had one phone,(party line) for the entire home, one radio for the entire home, no TV, no cell phone.We were poor farm kids but se did have our own pencil , pens, & paper, ofr 1st through 8th. Back then the high shcool kids had to pay to ride the elemntary school district bus to town.

dreerbeer said on Thursday, Feb 28 at 10:18 PM

What they more than likely need is a rework of their budget. They could do like our (dist 51) and cut services that directly effect students. OR they could look at many of the unnecessary administrative expenditures and cut them.

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