Schools

Community, Administrators Discuss Brecksville-Broadview Heights Levy

Wednesday's meeting gave the public the chance to ask questions about spending and other issues in the district.

Superintendent Scot Prebles painted a dire picture of the school district’s finances last night at the . 

Individuals from the community, Board of Education members and district administrators gathered Wednesday evening for the Schools Issues Committee’s Town Hall meeting on the levy. The Brecksville-Broadview Heights City School District has a on the May 3 ballot; the Schools Issues Committee is the volunteer-based organization created to support the levy campaign. 

Wednesday’s meeting was designed to share information with the public and to express the “urgent need” for the levy, Board President George J. Balasko told the audience. He noted that a lot of thought went into the decision to put it on the ballot. A number of individuals, from the mayor of Broadview Heights to a high school student to the district superintendent, spoke on behalf of the levy.

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“This is a very important issue that we have on the ballot,” Prebles said. 

Prebles gave a presentation to the audience, striving to answer questions that he’s been hearing in the community. These topics ranged from whether the average teacher salary is too high to how the state budget could impact Brecksville-Broadview Heights. 

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Prebles said the district would lose about $2.9 million next year under the current state budget proposal, making the levy’s passage even more important to the district.  

“The mechanism we use to fund schools is not sustainable,” Prebles said.

After the superintendent’s presentation, the audience was given the opportunity to ask questions, many of which dealt with specific areas of spending or budget cuts. The issue of how to approach those who don’t support the levy was also broached a few times. Josef Schuessler, a longtime Brecksville resident, raised the question of how much citizens should have to pay, noting that many senior citizens may live on fixed incomes. 

After the meeting, Schuessler said that he supported the levy, but that he wanted to raise that issue to the committee, because he thought many in the crowd were already supportive of the levy campaign. 

When the issue was raised again, Greg Skaljac, a Brecksville City Council member and co-chair of the Schools Issues Committee, said that those who don't support the levy can be reminded of the different potential benefits to successful schools, such as higher property values and general community pride.  

After the question and answer session, Prebles took a couple of minutes to introduce Matt Galland, a senior at . Galland told the audience that he felt the school’s competitive classes gave him an advantage for the future and that further cuts could threaten those opportunities for future students. 

Galland said after the meeting that he wanted to speak so that a student’s point of view could be shared. 


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