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Show School Board Plans To Hold Special Levy To 3.5 Mills at Present BOARD PRESIDENT EXPLAINS NEEDS OF DISTRICT SCHOOLS If the proposed mill levy increase in-crease is approved at Monday's election, it will authorize the Board of Education to increase the school tax levy by 5.2 mills; however, the board contemplates contem-plates only a 3V2 mill increase at the present time. That was the information given The News Wednesday afternoon aft-ernoon by J. C. Smith, school board president. Mr. Smith said the board feels that 3V'2 mills additional will be sufficient suffi-cient at this time. "Without the authorization for an increased levy which we are asking the voters to give us," Mr. Smith said, "we have reached the limit of our taxing ability, and also the limit of our ability to furnish the necessities for properly educating the children chil-dren of the district. We are doing as much as we can with what we have. If the school patrons want more in the way of education for their children, they must give us additional funds." Mr. Smith pointed out that the Board of Education wants to add to the teaching staff, furnish fur-nish biology and chemistry laboratory lab-oratory equipment, employ - librarians, li-brarians, domestic arts and other teachers, and complete badly-needed renovation in the school buildings including floor coverings and painting inside and outside on some of the buildings. . Also, he said, the district needs two or three new school busses, new library books, new maps for the history and geography classes, new textbooks, "and," he added, "we must maintain teacher salaries at the state average, or we will be unable to employ the aver-age-or-better teachers, and may be forced to staff the Beaver County schools with teachers See SCHOOLS, Back Page HERE'S MORE ABOUT SCHOOLS Continued from Page One which the Utah Education Association Asso-ciation has labeled 'sub-standard'." "Explaining a school budget, or the formula by which we receive re-ceive additional money from state equalization funds, is pretty pret-ty hard to do," he said, "at least in such a manner that the average aver-age school patron will understand under-stand it. The state formula is based on many things, including enrollment, amount oi tax the district is levying, transportation transporta-tion of pupils, etc. Each of these items has a bearing on the total amount received by local districts. dis-tricts. But I do want to point out that, contrary to rumors that have been circulated, by increasing in-creasing our local tax levy we do NOT lose funds from the tate equalization distribution. On the contrary, if this mill levy passes on Monday we will receive re-ceive MORE money from the state fund than we are at present pres-ent receiving." Mr. Smith endorsed the proposed pro-posed mill levy, and stated that all members of the Board of Education Ed-ucation favored its passage. "It .vill do much to help the Board of Education increase the edu- cational facilities of the county," coun-ty," he said, "and the one thing uppermost in the mind of each member of the board is Better Schools for Beaver County." Gary Bingham enlisted in the U S Navy on April 16th, leaving that night for San Diego, Calif., where he will ' take his basic training. |
