The Knoxville School Board held a special meeting last night to discuss the state of District 202 in its first town hall-style presentation.
To a meager gathering of about 10 attendees in the Knoxville High School auditorium, Superintendent Steve Wilder talked about the district’s curriculum, technology, facilities and finances among other topics.
The topic Wilder said “gets most people’s attention” was district finances. Wilder began with a summary of the budgets since he started as Superintendent in 2010, mentioning the balanced budgets from 2011 to 2014, the deficit of $226,000 in 2015 and the surplus of $243,000 going into 2016.
Following the meeting, Wilder told WGIL the fear of a property tax freeze from Governor Bruce Rauner has the district considering a tax levy hike.
“I will present the board with three options on Monday night and one of the things we talked about previously was trying to get a range of options,” Wilder said. “Everything from no increase to a middle of the road increase and then a more substantial increase.”
Wilder says the tax options will be brought before the board for discussion during next Monday’s regular school board meeting.
He says the revenue from a tax increase could go toward getting air conditioning installed at Mable Woolsey Elementary School, adding that the district has done a lot of facility work up to this point without “having to ask taxpayers to pay more.”
