Residents will soon be able to track how the St. Joseph School District is using the 61-cent increase of the tax levy.

Proposition 2 was approved during this month’s election.

St. Joseph School Superintendent Doug Van Zyl said one of the next steps is launching a levy update page. Anyone will be able to view the page on the district’s website and track what’s happening over the next five years, as the levy increase does have a five-year sunset provision.

“Our maintenance facilities director has started some of the processes of being able to do the safety and security things, so we should be able to show big red check marks when we get those things accomplished on that page,” Van Zyl said. “It’s kind of like when you drive down the highway or the interstate and you see that big orange sign that says, ‘Hey, this was completed as promised.’ That’s just a reminder to the community that, here’s what we said we’re going to do, now we hopefully have been able to accomplish that and here’s what we’ve done.”

St. Joseph School Board President Seth Wright said with the Proposition 2 approval, the focus can turn from operations to addressing other priorities.

“We can start to transition to looking at things that have been put, as Dr. Van Zyl says, not just on the back burner, but they haven’t even been on the stove,” Wright said. “Those would be academics, we need to look at our buildings, and how that configuration is and the condition of them and come up with a plan now to address that. We also need to look at the organizational structure of the district, all the way from teachers in the classroom up to our top level administrators, and say, now as we’re rebuilding the school district, how do we do it in the right way and where do we deploy our resources in the most effective manner.

To view the Proposition 2 Progress report page, click here.