The St. Joseph School District has wrapped up a series of community engagement meetings in an effort to shape the district going forward.

Superintendent Dr. Robert Newhart said in total around 86 people attended over the course of the series of meetings with the final meeting held Monday night.

“We had very good feedback that we’re listening and we’ll take and utilize on many subjects.  From academic programs, to facilities to finance,” Newhart said.  “Give that opportunity to help use formulate the direction the district should go.”

He said some of the main themes from the meeting seemed to be finances, building trust in the district, and to be specific on what additional money would be used for.  A public survey is still available until 4 p.m. Friday on the St. Joseph School District’s website. So far, Newhart said several hundred people have filled out the survey.

“It’s presenting some options.  Those options are a Prop C waiver which would basically be a .52 cent tax increase to our operating levee bringing it back to our true operating ceiling of $3.64.  The second option is .63 cents which was basically the same amount that was sunset off the books in 2013.  A third scenario was a .96 cent and then a fourth scenario was basically not doing anything and how that would affect the district as well,” Newhart said.

Each option would require a public vote.

“That’s what we’re trying to decide as a board of education what would be supported or not,” Newhart said. “The earliest that could happen would be April and the board would have to make a decision in January in order to get to the County Clerk’s in order to get it placed on the ballot for an election.”

He said they plan to present the results of a random community survey, the community engagement meetings and the public online survey to the St. Joseph School Board of Education next Monday.