The Smith-Green School Board approved the purchase of the house in the foreground at 233 W. Washington St. The elementary school can be seen in the background.

The superintendent of Smith-Green Community Schools said she would like to see the teacher’s contract settled and signed before school starts next month.

Churubusco teachers have been working three years without a contract. Both sides say the talks have stalled despite ongoing mediation efforts.

But superintendent Carol Kaiser said at Monday’s board meeting that she will make herself available to anyone who wishes to talk to her about the contract.

“I’m very interested in having a contract settlement before the new school year,” Kaiser said.

The first day of school for students is Aug. 18.

Soaring fuel prices dominated the discussions during the rest of the meeting - including talk of the proposed budget for 2009, skyrocketing transportation costs and a new policy that will add transportation fees for field trips and extracurricular activities to students’ book statements.

Extracurricular fees of $10 per activity (not per individual games or events) will be charged to middle schools students and high schoolers will pay $30 per activity.

For field trips on a school bus, students will be charged $1.05 per mile plus the driver’s salary, PERF and FICA. Activity bus (school van) charges will be .65 cents per mile.

Board member Robert Amber, who had voiced concerns over the proposed policy at the last meeting, said he had crunched some numbers and discovered that “no one will make any money off of this policy.”

It will only help offset transportation costs, he said.

Adam Skiles, director of business and technology, said not only have fuel costs increased, but the cost of oil and lubricants and maintenance had increased, as well.

Skiles said the corporation had already spent 67 percent of its transportation budget by the end of June. Last year, he said, the corporation was below the 50 percent mark at this same time of the year.

Amber said he was OK with the proposed policy, but he wanted to add a cap, so that no family with multiple children or children with multiple activities were overloaded with fees. The board agreed to a cap of $100 per family.

The cost of transporting students was about $33 each for football players, $46 for volleyball and $70 for boys basketball, said Jerry Lang, assistant high school principal.

“This (fee) won’t do more than cover half” of our costs, Lang said.

Many school districts are looking at the same kind of policy or have already done so, Lang said. And none that he knew of had a cap on the fees, he said.

The costs will be much greater during spring sports, Lang said. when scheduling forces junior varsity and varsity teams to travel separately.

“We have to make it right for our community and our district,” Board president Tanya Young said. “We need to protect these programs for our kids. We’re in a dollar crunch and we’re strapped financially.”

“We may need to create a culture where if people want these kinds of things, then they have to help pay for them,” Lang said.

In other business:

• Nick Uecker was sworn in as the newest member of the board after being appointed to fill the position of vacating Paul Bowser, who resigned several weeks ago.
• The board hired Trisha Brooks as an English teacher in the high school. Brooks was a student teacher at Wayne High School in Fort Wayne and a substitute teacher at Huntington County Region 8 Educational Service Center. She is a graduate of Indiana University - Purdue University, Fort Wayne, where she earned a Bachelor of Science degree in secondary education in May.
• The board formally accepted a $20,000 Project Lead the Way grant. The money will be used to fund high school engineering classes taught by Mark Grove. The longtime high school teacher has already been to training for the classes, Kaiser said, and part of the grant paid for his training, as well.
• Middle school teacher Nathan Wright will teach the Jump Start classes - a remediation class for students who failed one or both portions of the ISTEP tests. The classes will begin July 28 and continue through Aug. 8 from 8-11:30 a.m.
• The board approved the purchase of property and a house near the school at 233 W. Washington St. The school obtained two appraisals as required by state law. Both valued the property at $58,000. The purchase is funded through the capital projects fund for acquisition and development of land, Kaiser said.
• The 2009 budget proposal will be discussed at the Aug. 4 meeting. Skiles said the budget is very similar to this year’s budget with adjustments and increases reflecting increasing fuel costs.  “The tax rates have stayed steady over the past several years,” he said. “And we have done well with our debt and haven’t raised taxes for taxpayers.”