School Board - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

School Board

The Minot Public Schools' 2013 budget is closer to reality.

Board members passed the budget today on second reading.

It includes a nearly-five percent increase in spending over the previous year but requires more property tax funding due to expenses related to flood recovery.

Business Manager Scott Moum says the almost-five percent increase can be traced to pay raises for staff members of the district.

(Scott Moum, Minot Public Schools Business Manager) "You added about eight people from last year. You had 5% increases in all your employee groups. This is between 4.5 and 5% increase in your budget from the prior year. So when you think that 80% of your budget is salaries and benefits and you had 5% increases in that, really we don't have a lot of other increases in the overall budget at all."

There'll be a public hearing on the budget on October 4th at 6pm at the school district administration building.

Also today, board members approved awarding 13.3 million dollars in contracts for the second phase of work at the new Ramstad Middle School.

The district's engineering firm says costs so far for Ramstad are under estimates.