East Montgomery - News
New Caney ISD creates new website, deals with budget deficit
By JENNIFER SUMMER
In a round of updates, New Caney Independent School District board members had a chance to hear about changes in the district and discuss the upcoming budget Nov. 18.
Employees, students and parents will soon have a new district website that allows for easy navigation to specific school websites and other important links.
“We decided to take this opportunity to update our website to be more user friendly and easy to navigate,” Superintendent Rick Cowen said.
Each campus has its own network administrator that manages the website and everything is managed and constantly looked over by the technology department.
The new website will allow for news articles and New Caney ISD related news to be constantly displayed on the front page and be archived when it is considered old news.
“We will now be able to get information and important news to parents and students with the new website,” Jeannie Reed, instructional technology coordinator/trainer, said. “Anything from schools in the district will be able to be displayed on our website. We encourage anyone to give us feedback and ideas for the website.”
The New Caney ISD board also discussed their deficit budget which is expected to be cut in half
The district adopted a recommended budget for 2008-2009 with a projected deficit of $6.2 million.
“We have been working to decrease the deficit. We are predicting for the worst case scenarios,” Cowen said. “We will be able to deduct some money from the deficit due to employees leaving the district because of attrition and reducing expenses where we can.”
The district also plans to save money through its energy conservation plan and earn more revenue this next fiscal year.
In other business, the steel frame of the north end of Porter High School has been installed and construction on the new school is progressing.
The plumbing and half of the electrical work for the school has been completed and the work on the tennis courts has begun.
The next project is to continue pouring concrete for the auditorium and the locker rooms.
The district also had new measures in place for hurricane preparedness including cleaning out refrigerators and freezers, removing tarps and covers from tennis courts and updating the computer server and housing it at another site so if the power is out, the website and e-mail accounts will continue to function.
Employees, students and parents will soon have a new district website that allows for easy navigation to specific school websites and other important links.
“We decided to take this opportunity to update our website to be more user friendly and easy to navigate,” Superintendent Rick Cowen said.
Each campus has its own network administrator that manages the website and everything is managed and constantly looked over by the technology department.
The new website will allow for news articles and New Caney ISD related news to be constantly displayed on the front page and be archived when it is considered old news.
“We will now be able to get information and important news to parents and students with the new website,” Jeannie Reed, instructional technology coordinator/trainer, said. “Anything from schools in the district will be able to be displayed on our website. We encourage anyone to give us feedback and ideas for the website.”
The New Caney ISD board also discussed their deficit budget which is expected to be cut in half
The district adopted a recommended budget for 2008-2009 with a projected deficit of $6.2 million.
“We have been working to decrease the deficit. We are predicting for the worst case scenarios,” Cowen said. “We will be able to deduct some money from the deficit due to employees leaving the district because of attrition and reducing expenses where we can.”
The district also plans to save money through its energy conservation plan and earn more revenue this next fiscal year.
In other business, the steel frame of the north end of Porter High School has been installed and construction on the new school is progressing.
The plumbing and half of the electrical work for the school has been completed and the work on the tennis courts has begun.
The next project is to continue pouring concrete for the auditorium and the locker rooms.
The district also had new measures in place for hurricane preparedness including cleaning out refrigerators and freezers, removing tarps and covers from tennis courts and updating the computer server and housing it at another site so if the power is out, the website and e-mail accounts will continue to function.
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