SJSD Board of Education discusses key agenda items
Monday was the first official St. Joseph School District Board of Education meeting of 2025.
The BOE is getting down to business with a series of meetings to address multiple issues across the District.
Closed executive meetings will take place to both introduce and follow the official BOE meeting scheduled for 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 27 at Troester Media Center, 3401 Renick St.
Big key items of discussion during Monday night’s meeting were:
Progress in i-Ready and state testing throughout the District
December financial reports
April 2025 ballot language
Community eligibility for provision for free lunch
Testing scores
Assistant Superintendent, Ashly McGinnis reports that student test scores in math and English are projected to increase during end-of-the-year testing.
Although testing score percentages aren’t quite where they need to be at state level, students are continuing to make progress when it comes to increasing those percentages.
December financial reports
Reports from SJSD’s December financials show that the District has expended approximately 51% of the expenditure budget.
Expenditures have decreased from the prior year by about $480,000.
The District reports that this decrease can be attributed to the timing of payments and decreased expenditures in areas such as: fuel/gasoline, food supplies and supplemental pay.
April 2025 ballot language
Some hiccups came into play when the Board was discussing ballot language for the proposed “Proposition two” in the April 2025 ballot.
As the District has plans for two new high schools, but does not have land- ballot language had to be a little more vague in some areas, compared to others.
“We will be asking for $157 million. The cost to the taxpayers will be 60 cents,” said SJSD Superintendent, Dr. Gabe Edgar. “And then the ballot language, as you can see, will be ‘Proposition two’, for two schools. So all of that information will for to the courthouse tomorrow (Tuesday).”
Edgar explained that the description of the location of the two schools had to be narrowed down.
“We’ve had a lot of discussion in regards to the location itself,” said Edgar. “I think we were at a position to where we could be pretty comfortable to say, ‘South of Highway 36’.”
Edgar said he has hopes land will be purchased before the April 2025 Election to make the location aspect a little more clear.
But for now, the Board is happy with what they have.
Community eligibility for provision for free lunch
District officials looked into the cost for providing free breakfast and lunch to students in need throughout SJSD.
The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) explains on its website, “The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) provides the option to offer free meals to all students in eligible high poverty Local Education Agencies (LEA) and schools without collecting household applications.”
Numbers provided by Dr. Edgar Monday night showed the District would lose $189,000 a month if they offered kids free breakfast and lunch during the school day.
SJSD School Board member, Whitney Lanning, peaked interest in a more meaningful discussion on setting up the measure to be taken into consideration down the road.
The School Board will have its next meeting at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, Feb. 24 at the Troester Media Center on 3401 Renick St.
