An operating budget for the 2008-2009 school year adopted last week by the Lindbergh Board of Education does not include funding for a proposed Operational Services Center.

The board voted June 10 to adopt an operating budget for the 2008-2009 school year that projects expenditures of $62,533,514 with anticipated revenue of $59,246,460 — a deficit of $3,287,054. Despite the anticipated deficit, the district will not go into the red, but will dip into its reserves. Chief Financial Officer Pat Lanane previously told the Call the $3.2 million in deficit spending is “a worst-case scenario.”

Regarding the Operational Services Center, or centralized warehouse, board members agreed during a recent workshop to not include funding for it in the 2008-2009 operational budget.

Lindbergh officials have been discussing for some time the possibility of constructing an Operational Services Center to serve the district’s supply and distribution needs and allow the conversion of storage space at a handful of schools into more classrooms.

At the May 27 budget workshop, board members discussed a proposal to construct the services center in four phases at a cost of $800,000 per phase.

Noting that board members wanted a “modular” proposal that would allow the facility to be constructed in phases, Superintendent Jim Sandfort said, “… So the question really before the board is you can stop it at any place along the way. We wanted to give the board an opportunity that if they wanted to move forward, they could do it on a level-stream basis. If you don’t, then this is probably our final thought on the Operational Services Center until we hear back from the board. We’ve had this thing back and forth a couple of times. So this is like step one and it puts us on the way. It’s a level funding stream. Yes, it’s considerable, but if you’re trying to a run a 21st-century district with a support network in some cases that is really pretty antiquated, and we’re eventually going to have to get there. Now may not be the time, but we’re going to have to do this and this is I think a financially feasible way to do it. So it’s just our thought process responding to the board request.”

Executive Director of Planning and Development Karl Guyer said, “This simply gives you all another way of approaching it from a financial standpoint. Rather than dealing with all of it in terms of one expenditure and then built over a period of time, this allows this to be built over an extended period of time … This proposes something being committed to over four different funding cycles, but it’s also forcing the construction to get done over four different funding cycles so that it’s not rapidly hitting the budget all at one time. But again, this provides a different financial vehicle than what’s been looked at in the past.”

But some board members, including Vice President Vic Lenz and Secretary Janine Fabick, expressed concerns about using operational revenue to fund the construction of the services center, saying such funds should come from a bond issue. Compounding the issue are concerns about overcrowding at Sperreng Middle School.

“… I have some concerns about taking this out of operations similar to Vic and I also have concerns about — I know that we’ve been going back and forth and I hate to continue to delay this process, but I really — it’s very difficult for me to look at a project of this magnitude when we have so many other things out there that are still so unresolved …,” Fabick said, adding she’d like to put the services center on hold until the space concerns at Sperreng are resolved.

Lenz said, “I would be opposed to taking that kind of money for a building out of operational funds. I would prefer to take it out of bond-levy funds and if we determine that the solution to the demographics problems is to take the funds (from a future bond issue), then this needs to wait. I don’t see taking that kind of money out of our operational money that we need to pay teachers … I’m not opposed to the Operational Services Center, but not out of operational money.”

After board members indicated they did not wish to proceed with the services center, Lanane said, “… Of course, I feel badly in some ways about this because I think it was a great project, but when you have overcrowding at one of your schools, at your middle school, I mean this overcrowding has really stepped up and really interfered with our normal processes. I think we would have been at a point looking at a bond issue and this could have probably been a very logical piece of that, but the needs of kids always have to come first and I think what I’m hearing is we have to attend to the overcrowding and I think that’s really the message I would leave with all my cohorts in the business services department … is sure we have needs, but the needs, but the needs of kids always come first.

“And so what I’m hearing is we’re going to figure out what we need to do for the middle-school overcrowding, and I think that’s the message for not only the school district, but also for our public. That’s an important need that we really need to attend to.”

In a separate matter at the June 10 board meeting, members authorized the administration to pursue a proposal from Satellite Shelter to lease a modular building, or trailer, to provide immediate relief for the space concerns at Sperreng. The single structure would provide six classrooms.

The district issued a request for proposals to eight modular-building suppliers and three responded with Satellite Shelter providing “the most competitive proposal and best solution,” Guyer wrote in a June 10 memo to Sandfort.

Guyer also wrote, “The cost for three years of use, including setup and removal at the end of the term, is $320,183.”

The 2008-2009 operating budget includes funds for the installation and lease of a modular building to ease the overcrowding at Sperreng and the conversion of what currently is storage area at the middle school into space for small-group instruction.

In a related matter, the board voted June 10 to authorize the administration to contract with Patron Insight for the development, administration and analysis of a community survey on three proposals to alleviate the Sperreng space concerns. The contract is not to exceed $14,300.