By Eamon Baird
PIQUA — Jeremie Hittle, treasurer for the Piqua City School District discussed the five-year revenues and expenditures forecast at the monthly Piqua Board of Education Meeting on Thursday, Nov. 16.
“Overall, long-term projections have been holding. So that’s the forecasts that we’ve been doing, the salaries, projections, all of those things are on point,” Hittle said.
Hittle did say one issue of concern is student enrollment.
“I would say since I’ve been here, it’s consistently gone down a little bit each year,” he said, expressing this is a statewide issue. “Overall, the state population for student enrollment is down.”
According to the Ohio Department of Education’s five-year enrollment trend Ohio Schools are down 2.6% in student population from the 2018-2019 school year.
The board approved the treasurer’s agenda, including the five-year fiscal forecast and the 2023 monthly fiscal report.
Superintendent Dwayne Thompson discussed the importance of police presence in the district during his report to the board.
“Our officers are so good with our students and our staff. They’re great at helping us with things like threat assessments as well as our education program. So we sought some extra support with having more police presence in our buildings,” Thompson said.
“The main goal is to ensure the safety and security of all the learning environments or buildings,” Thompson said.
He also discussed the Veterans Day event, during which the schools prepared 340 breakfasts.
“We’re very blessed to have some great veterans in our community. It’s so neat to see our kids engage with that. It’s so important. And they really do engage to the point where they’ll settle the veteran comes by themselves, they’ll serve them the breakfast, no, walk them to the table and walk them out of the building,” Thompson said.
He also discussed new donations for the Brandon Copeland Scholarship.
“He was a 2000 graduate who unfortunately died in a car crash right after he graduated; didn’t get to go to college; did not get to start his life, so to speak. But we do get donations every year on his behalf for his scholarships. We really appreciate that, and that really keeps his spirit alive,” Thompson said.
The board unanimously approved Thompson’s agenda in addition to the personnel agenda. The next regularly scheduled Piqua Board of Education Meeting will be on Wednesday, Dec 14, at 6 p.m.
