All this snow has had impacts beyond the obvious traffic and school closures.
At the Animas High School Board meeting Wednesday night, the monetary impact of an El Niño winter was apparent on the budget.
The school has made accommodations to keep their budget balanced, Head of School Sean Woytek said, including purchasing a snow blower to clear walkways, saving $80 to $100 each day it snows, and they will no longer plow daily during breaks. The school also has reduced janitorial cleaning from five times weekly to two and is reducing maintenance to only the most necessary, Director of Finance Christine Imming said.
Several issues are confronting the board, including the possibility of being included in the potential Durango School District 9-R mill-levy ballot issue in November.
“We don’t anticipate a conversation with 9-R until early March because they’re still trying to get their heads around what they’ll ask for,” AHS Board President Ann Laffaye said. “We have to lock down the language and methodology of allocation of a mill levy, but we also learned something from the meetings 9-R held (in January). A lot of people don’t believe we’re a public school, and we are.”
AHS may be a public school, but unlike 9-R, it had to raise money to pay for its facility. The school needs to raise an additional $150,000 to balance its budget this year, and it’s $46,000 shy after its major fundraiser in November.
abutler@durangoherald.com