BROOKINGS The Brookings School Board revised district policies on handling complaints about books and curriculum. The changes were prompted by new state laws going into effect July 1. The board unanimously passed the policies with two emergency votes during Monday nights meeting.
The policies still allow parents to limit their own childs access to books. Requests to censor what other students can access involves a three-step procedure culminating in a review committee.
We still have the form parents can fill out if they dont want their child to access library materials, Teresa Binkley, board president, said. The committee will review just one complaint at a time, because it involves reading all of the material and researching some of the other agencies that give recommendations.
The committee will now have one adult citizen rather than three. The rest of the committee still consists of a principal, a librarian and two teachers.
School board member Deb Debates said the policy allows reconsideration of decisions after one year.
If material is challenged, it will continue to be used during the reconsideration process unless the superintendent or school board decides to suspend its use, Debates said. Decisions of the superintendent or school board on reconsidered materials will be binding for one calendar year before a new request can be reconsidered. We worked on that policy significantly a year ago, and then these are two items we had to add due to updates in the law.
In September 2023, an overflow crowd at a school board meeting urged the district to resist pressure from a local group seeking to ban books. In December 2023, the board adopted a new policy for censorship requests. Prior to that, the policy had not been updated since 2013. Due to changes in state law, the district also amended the policies last year.
We believe we followed the criteria in the law that says what we have to do, Binkley said. Its an emergency (vote) because it has to be on the books by July 1.
In other business, the board took a first look at the 2025-26 budget. The proposed budget sits at $60.8 million about $13.8 million less than last year.
General fund is almost half of our budget this year. Last year it was about 40%, Stacey VanBeek, director of business affairs, said. We are less than $100,000 over budget for (general) fund balance spending. So were pretty close right now, and well continue to look at ways we might be able to shave a little here and there.
South Dakota schools will receive $7,497.77 per student in state aid next year. Total enrollment for Brookings last year was 3,522 an increase of 76 from the prior year.
Since 2020, (enrollment) has been on the rise, VanBeek said. We hope to see that again this fall. Again for budgeting purposes, at this point we are just assuming that were going to stay steady.
The state legislature increased school funding by 1.25% for next year. In April, Brookings approved a 1% salary increase for all employees covered by the districts master agreement. VanBeek said once benefits are factored in, total compensation is more than that.
The average was like 2.13%, she said. It was an over 2% total package increase, because it was 1% salary but then health (insurance premiums) went up 8%. I know it did for the employee part as well but the district took on 75% of that increase.
Like many schools in South Dakota, Brookings is facing a special education budget shortfall and will be requesting money from the extraordinary cost fund a program the state established in 1997 to help cover special education deficits.
Were still going to need to apply for another $1 million of extraordinary cost funds, VanBeek said. (In 2024) I applied for $1.03 million in extraordinary costs, and we received about $980,000.
Last year, school districts requested $5.1 million from the fund, and the state granted about $4.45 million in funding.
There were districts that were shorted $200,000, VanBeek said. I feel pretty lucky we ended up where we did. They did give priority to schools that apply using the high-cost student method which is what we did as opposed to a high-cost program.
Superintendent Summer Schultz said schools need to have the right ratio of staff to students with individualized educational programs to address special needs.
I would be more nervous if it were a high-cost program, because that is why some didnt get (funds) at all, she said. If youre choosing to have more staff than align with your IEPs, thats considered a more high-cost program.
Brookings has 709 special education students approximately 20% of total enrollment. The district spends 16.5% of its budget on special education programming.
Board member Keli Books said Brookings has caught the attention of parents in neighboring districts.
If you have a child with special needs and youre living in a small community surrounding us, they might not be able to offer some things, Books said. So were probably getting people moving to Brookings because of that level of service that were able to provide.
The budget proposal is preliminary.
The board will vote to adopt a final budget at either the July or August meeting.
Contact Jay Roe at [email protected].
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