Announcements

2021 Common School District Budget and Election Legal Notice .docx

Kindergarten Screening will be taking place on Wednesday, September 2nd at 12:30pm . Looking forward to meeting our new students and families. Please call to schedule your appointment time. appropriate PPE required.

Click here to read the full report (PDF).

Report Highlights

Audit Objective

Determine whether the Board and District officials effectively managed general fund balances.

Key Findings

• Unrestricted fund balance totaled approximately $2 million on June 30, 2018, or 58.6 percent of the ensuing year’s budgeted appropriations and exceeded the statutory limit by 54.6 to 73.4 percentage points from 2015-16 through 2017-18.
• The District’s budgeting practices included appropriating fund balance not needed to fund operations and adopting budgets that overestimated appropriations by a total of more than $911,000 (11 percent) from 2015-16 through 2017-18.
• District officials failed to take corrective action to our prior report that pointed out the excess accumulation of fund balance.

Key Recommendations

• Develop a plan to reduce the amount of unrestricted fund balance to the legal limit.
• Adopt realistic annual budgets based on historical or other known trends.

District officials disagreed with certain aspects of our findings and recommendations. Appendix B includes our comments on issues raised in the District’s response letter.

On Wednesday, November 29, 2017, the Wainscott Board of Education held a special meeting to hear your concerns about how incidents of head lice are handled in the School House.  We appreciate that many of you were able to join us for this conversation.

The concerns/questions most frequently asked:

What do we do when we learn that a student has head lice?
Parent/guardian is contacted and asked to pick up child and begin treatment immediately.

What do we do if a child cannot be picked up immediately or we are unable to reach a listed contact?
The child remains in class.  Staff discretely monitors students’ proximity to one another.  We make sure that we speak with a parent/guardian to inform them of the situation and to let them know the child needs treatment.

Is the bus company notified when we have an occurrence of head lice?
We checked with the bus company and they are not notified by other districts.

When is the child allowed to return to school?
Most treatments are effective after application and the child can return to school the day after receiving treatment.  We will request that the parent bring the child to school the day after treatment, and that they provide us with the packaging from the treatment that was used.  If they are unable to bring their child to school, we will request that the child bring the packaging to school with them.

Who checks the child before they go back to class?
The school nurse will be notified that there was a case of head lice.  She will be here (based upon her availability) to check the child before returning to class.  If it is still an active case, the parent/guardian will be asked to take the child home for additional treatment.

We will advertise for a substitute Registered Nurse for enhanced availability for any necessary inspections

What will we do if we have a case that is persistent and does not appear to respond to treatment?
We will work with the family to find the appropriate treatment and/or resources needed to address the situation

Emergency contact cards were recently sent home for verification and updating (if needed).  If you have not yet returned your card, please do so as soon as possible.  It is important that we have accurate contact names and numbers.  If you do not return your card, we will contact you directly.
Future communication regarding this issue will be on Wainscott School letterhead and will reflect our procedures.
If you have any questions regarding this communication, please do not hesitate to contact us directly.

Wishing you a wonderful holiday season,

Deborah A. Haab

School Superintendent

Dear Parents & Guardians,

As you may have heard, New York State recently required the testing of drinking water in the schools
to ensure that the quality of the water was satisfactory. I am pleased to report that all of the faucets in
the school from which students may obtain drinking water were tested and that the results were
outstanding. If you wish to see the report, you may click on Water Testing – Wainscott School.
Sincerely yours,

Stuart Rachlin, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools