BonnerSprings.com

Like many Americans, the Bonner Springs-Edwardsville School District Board of Education members had the economy on their minds at their Monday meeting.

In addition to the bad news of declining enrollment — down 78 students from last year, which, if the trend continued for the next two years, would mean less money from the state — the district, like Wyandotte County, must contend with a burgeoning roll of delinquent property taxes not collected.

This year the number of delinquent properties in the district is about 10.6 percent, said Tamara Koppang, director of budget and finances for the district, compared to 4.8 percent last year.

Koppang said she wouldn’t know how much the district would be affected until tax payments for 2009 start coming in to the county in January.

Also discussed by the board members after quickly dispensing with the agenda items were the district’s efforts and goals at helping parents with early childhood development.

Superintendent Robert Van Maren discussed a lecture he’d attended by a British researcher who’d discovered a correlation between the number of words children learn while young and the kinds of careers they are capable of more than 20 years later.

The district already offers a Head Start program and a Teachers as Parents program; each has a limited number of slots.

Van Maren said he hoped when the new Bonner Springs Library opened next spring the district and the library could work together to offer programs to help young parents learn how to promote their children’s early learning development.

The district has in place intervention programs for children who are not up to speed with their grade level in reading and math skills, Van Maren said, but the researcher’s work showed that the time to make the most difference in children’s ability to learn was before they begin school.

Earlier in the meeting, the board:

• Approved payment of warrants for $441,412.

• Approved payment of construction bills for $73,383.

• Heard a bond-issue and a superintendent’s update from Van Maren. He told the board he’d been negotiating with Verizon over compensation for allowing the company to erect and operate a cellular tower on the grounds of Delaware Ridge Elementary. He was also researching wind turbines that could be put up at the school, which he said could accommodate two of the size he was considering, and which would save the district more than $1 million in electricity bills each over their lifetime.

Van Maren also told the board that Noelle Sliva, a kindergarten teacher at Edwardsville Elementary, had recently received a $1,000 “Teacher of the Year” award from Wal-Mart.

Also, the district had saved an estimated total of $565,658 in its four years working with the consulting firm Energy Education to reduce the district’s energy usage.

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