The District 205 Board of Education has eliminated all of the fees for registering students for school.
The board voted unanimously to eliminate the fees for every grade level as well as to do away with student’s activity fees and junior high and high school athletic participation fees.
During the Monday night meeting, board member Rod Scherpe and Superintendent Dr. John Asplund discussed how eliminating the fees would allow parents, who previously may have had financial restraints put on them to register a student for school, can now do so without restriction.
“So we have no fees for them so they can come in early and register so we know who is going to be going to what schools early and hopefully kids won’t get bumped out of schools because they didn’t register until the last day.”
Superintendent Asplund responded saying that it was the goal to not bump kids out of schools.
Regarding fees at the high school, one of the more contentious plans was to increase the student parking fee from $20 to $180. That fee, instead, was doubled to $40.
In addition, the driver’s education fee was NOT increased last night. Superintendent Asplund told the board that the fee was already $250 and as such would not see an increase.
Despite a lot of uncertainty with the high school renovation project at District 205, there is some certainty. District 205 has a home for the Galesburg Area Vocational Center: Northwoods Church.
School Board members last night approved a 10-year lease with the Fremont Street church to move GAVC into a large space in the building — around 22,800 square feet — at a cost of $5,300 a month.
The monthly rent would increase every year of the lease by $100, maxing out at $6,300.
Superintendent Dr. John Asplund said that the space would provide plenty of room for the district to design the space how they see fit and provide space for the district’s life skills curriculum.
“Basically a blank canvas so we can go in there and create what we want. There’s no demo. The other area that we would like to strongly consider as part of that. We’d like to take the back part of that space and eventually turn that into ‘Life Skills’ space.”
Board member Nick Walters was the lone “nay” vote on the action item. Prior to voting, Walters discussed how he’d rather the district put the money into a location the district owned.
Along with that, he voiced his desire for the district to look for a more long-term solution for housing the vocational center.
However, Walters was outnumbered and board members voted to approve it.
Board members also approved change order requests for the Steele Elementary School construction, adding a dumpster outside and epoxy flooring to the boys and girls bathrooms.
Board members also approved a bid package for plumbing and electrical for the modular classrooms that will be utilized during the high school renovation project.
WGIL will have additional stories on Monday night’s District 205 board meeting later on Tuesday.
