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50
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2012 Weave the Web:
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VOL. 28, NO. 50

Board OKs Elwell demolition

School district to spend $200K to tear down vacant building in Sumpter Twp.
By Jerry LaVaute
Special Writer

Earlier this year, the Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education voted to close Elwell and Haggerty Elementary Schools, as a result of declining enrollment in the school district and, indeed, across the state of Michigan. Neither school re-opened this fall, and both remain shuttered. On Dec. 10, the other shoe

dropped, and the school board voted 5-2 to demolish Elwell for a cost of $200,000. Haggerty School, on the other hand, may re-open in the fall as a new home to the Early Childhood Development Center currently at the Edgemont School site, a pre-school program and a transition program designed for students over 18. The focus, the time and most of the emotion during Mondays meeting surrounded the fate of Elwell

School, however. The Sumpter Township Board of Trustees had passed a resolution sent to the board members, requesting that they reconsider the preliminary recommendation to destroy the school. They suggested that the school be used as the permanent site for a new area library. Elwell School is the only school in the Van Buren School District located in Sumpter Township, and township officials had hoped, perhaps, to acquire the building for a useful purpose. The school was built in 1958 and is 44,000 square feet. A white paper prepared by the

school district administration and presented by Superintendent Mike Van Tassel said it would cost the district $1.7 million to re-open the building as a school, including $870,000 to hook up to a nearby sewer system. When it closed, Elwell was served by a septic system. School board President Martha Toth said that schools built during the 1950s tended to be constructed to minimum standards, and werent built to last a long time. And if the building were used for a purpose other than a school,
PLEASE SEE ELWELL/3-A

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INDEX
Editorial Calendar Sports Page 4-A Page 2-C Page 1-B

District tweaks budget in face of falling revenue

By Jerry LaVaute
Special Writer

Death Notices Page 14-A

The Van Buren Public Schools Board of Education unanimously approved an amended 2012-2013 operating budget at its regular meeting on Nov. 26. More than 20 changes to the revenue and expense line item budgets were made. The net result was to reflect a $500,000 decrease in revenue, partly offset by a $150,000 reduction in expense. Business Director Karen Moffitt

walked the school board and those in the audience through the key changes. For revenue, a reduction of 29 students was reflected in the new budget, a decrease of $215,000. VBPS Superintendent Mike Van Tassel explained that the baseline count from which the decline was measured probably should have used the baseline in February, compared with a blended baseline of an average of the student count in September and February. Van Tassel said that, had the more

recent baseline been used, the student count would have shown a smaller decline. The budget amendments also included a revenue decrease of $400,000 from the state of Michigan, called the Special Education Headlee Obligation, to enable the state to recover funding it had provided for special education expense. Moffitt said that the school district did not spend as much of the funding as was anticipated, and the state was recouping

its money. Key changes to the expense budget included a cost decrease of $408,000, after the state reduced its retirement rate the amount of money provided by school districts to help fund employee retirement benefits from 27.4 percent to 25.4 percent. School district costs increased by $165,000 after hiring six new paraprofessionals. Moffitt said those
PLEASE SEE BUDGET/3-A

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