Despite passage of referendum, school still finds ways to reduce extraneous costs

By Thalib Razi
<[email protected]>

This school will make changes to the way it operates over the summer in order to cut any unnecessary costs, according to media department chairwoman Bonnie Grimble. 

These costs have become unnecessary because the school now has decided to only offer one session of summer school and has reduced the number of courses available to take over the summer for students, she said. These changes will also affect those who attend classes, plan an activity or want to borrow a book at this school over the summer. The school media center will be closed during the summer to students, reopening at the start of next school year.

Another change affecting the school is how maintenance will be handled. To save on the budget, the entire school district will shut down every Friday, reducing the amount of electricity, water and air conditioning used to keep the school in operation.

Maintenance

Over the summer, the school will function on weekends for activities and athletic competitions and during the other weekdays for summer school, according to facilities manager Rusty Creech. 

However, on Fridays, the school will completely shut all utilities down.

“It’ll be like it’s a holiday; no utilities going on, nobody in the building, all the lights are off, no air conditioning, no water being used, everything’s just shut down,” Creech said.

“We’re trying to save on the budget, and utilities is a big chunk of what we pay out,” he said.

According to assistant principal John Newton, all Carmel Clay schools will shut down on Fridays during the summer, not just the high school. 

Newton said, however, that this system-wide shut-down decision will also end up affecting how this school will conduct summer courses for summer school.

Since the whole school will be shut down on all Friday’s during the summer, the summer school schedule will have to be lengthened to accommodate this change.

Summer School

According to Assistant Principal John Newton, there is only going to be a one five-week session of summer school this year, as opposed to two four-week sessions.

Since Fridays are off, the session has to be five weeks long to compensate for the lost days, so that students can complete their courses, he said. And with many courses previously offered over the summer cut from the program in the school’s effort to save money, he said, there was simply no need for a second session.

Freshman Jonas Wang said he is taking physical education over the summer to make room for elective classes during the school year. While the four-day school week gives him longer weekends to relax, he said, the extended session limits students’ lengthier summer plans, like camp or vacationing or community service.

“I would rather it have remained shorter than five days a week, so that I have time in July for volunteering at St. Vincent’s,” he said.

Media Center

After next Thursday, the media center will be closed until August, according to media department chairperson Bonnie Grimble, and students must pay all library fines by tomorrow.

According to Grimble, several classes, like English, have been removed from summer school this year because they require heavy library work. Most of the courses offered are for remedial math and science, as well as physical education, she said, because none of these classes involve a lot of library work.

“There’s just no reason to have the library open over the summer, especially in these dire financial straits,” Grimble said.

This January, according to Grimble, the state announced that Carmel Clay Schools will not receive the $3 million it usually does, so it is time for the school to tighten its belt and cut any corner it can. However, the referendum voted on in May should help with the budget.

“(The media department)’s just trying to do our part to save money,” Grimble said. 

“But if you want to borrow a book, well, we’re so fortunate to have the public library right across the street,” Grimble said.