Board signs off on Moscow school budget

The Moscow School Board unanimously voted to approve the proposed budget for the coming school year.

Jennifer Johnson, the district’s business manager, addressed the details of the budget for the 2022-23 school year during a presentation at Wednesday night’s board meeting. According to Johnson, salaries and benefits make up 84% of total expenses.

The board also discussed raising fees for extra-curricular activities because of the increase in costs for those programs. Fees have not increased for several years.

The board later approved the negotiation agreement with the Moscow Education Association for the coming year. The agreement was reached recently by representatives of the interest-based bargaining team and the association’s members ratified it by 95%.

“The nice thing about interest-based bargaining is you get to have a good professional discussion about our common needs and so forth,” Moscow School District Superintendent Greg Bailey said. “We have made some changes because of the interest we saw, as well as things we had already seen that we felt we needed to do.”

Salaries will increase 4% for administrative staff, classified exempt employees and qualified classified personnel with no changes in benefit contribution.

The board also moved paraprofessionals up on the classified salary chart.

“I’d like to once again thank the teachers for their hard work this year,” said Jim Frenzel, vice chairperson of the board.

Palermo can be reached at apalermo@dnews.com or on Twitter @apalermotweets.