Talawanda Schools board adjusts participation fees, approves elementary resource officer

The school board initially set even higher fees for next year, $900 for high school and $350 for middle school students.

“We’re not in a position to reduce it, I believe, any lower than that because we still need to live through next year,” Superintendent Ed Theroux said. “Hopefully, we will be able to bring other services back.”

Theroux said that by keeping the price the same for all activities, it promotes every activity equally. If students were charged what some sports actually cost, those sports would be too expensive for students to play, he said.

“We wanted to keep as many sports — including marching band — operational,” Theroux said.

This price cut will cost the district as much as $220,000. Although the measure passed unanimously, Pat Meade, board president, and Shaunna Tafelski, treasurer, expressed concern about raising enough funds to pay for this cut.

“[This measure] requires us to have more faith in the budget and the [property] reappraisal,” Meade said.

“We don’t know how it’s going to turn out,” Tafelski said.

The board also awarded a contract to provide 600 Chromebooks to the high school for $173,000 to Y&S Technologies of a woman-owned business with regional offices for the East Coast and Midwest.

Also approved in the meeting was a memorandum of understanding between the district and the Butler County Sheriff’s Office to provide a sheriff’s deputy to be shared as a school resource officer between Bogan Elementary and Marshall Elementary. The board will reimburse the sheriff’s office $36.35 an hour for an officer to work at the schools for up to 200 days next year.

“I’m glad we can at least have SRO coverage to some degree,” Meade said.

The board also approved a lease to allow Butler County Educational Service Center to provide Head Start in one classroom in Marshall Elementary. BCESC will not pay rent for this classroom, which will teach exclusively Talawanda students, Theroux said.

This article was originally published by the Oxford Observer, a digital publication of content by Miami University students.