By Patricia Bogumil
Editor
The numbers in a budget tell a story. And while Waterford High School officials are pleased to offer a 2012-13 budget containing near-flat expenditures and a small drop in both the tax levy and mil rate, they are also pleased about offering students a quality education that twice this year received national recognition.
The WHS 2012-13 $11.95 million budget was approved Aug. 28 at the district’s annual meeting held at the high school. It features a $571 increase in expenses over the unaudited 2011-12 budget. The tax levy will be at $7.945 million, down from last year’s $8.028 million in taxes levied.
Assuming a zero percent growth in the district, the mil rate is set at $4.35 per $1,000 assessed valuation, down 5 cents from last year’s $4.40/$1,000 rate.
For the owner of a $200,000 home, that equates to $870 in WHS taxes, down $10 from what was paid under last year’s budget.
This year’s budgeting process went well from a financial perspective, according to Keith Brandstetter, the district’s superintendent.
In the last three years, the school board has “underlevied,” he said, and kept taxes down by moving money out of contingency funds, he noted.
“This year there really was not a need to ‘underlevy,’ we held the budget in check,” he said.
But even more important than the budget’s financial focus is its educational perspective, “which is really what we’re about,” added Brandstetter.
He said the WSH budget provides funding for a quality education offered by great teachers to great kids through a supportive community.
Projects this year will include continuing the process of making the entire building wireless; upgrading the auditorium’s lighting system with an updated computer product that supports part replacements and other needed products; replacing one side of windows in the math hallways; adding additional outside fencing; replace a large water heater; repairing a section of roof; replacing carpeting in the district office and classrooms; purchasing three classroom sets of laptop computers; and completing a small project throughout the district.
“We want to be a quality school both inside out and in what we offer,” Brandstetter said.
This year, WHS received national recognition twice, he noted: it was selected as one of Newsweek magazine’s “Top 1,000 schools” and also was named to the Advanced Placement Honor Roll by the College Board.
Enrollment this school year is expected to be up a little at about 10 students, for a total of about 1,080. The number of students in the freshman class, numbering 303 as classes prepared to start Sept. 4, was the most ever, said Brandstetter.
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