In a 4-2 vote on Monday, the Mahomet-Seymour School Board decided to hand off their after school childcare program to the YMCA.
Mahomet-Seymour staff cited trouble in staffing before and after school care. The YMCA will not provide before school care, promises a 10-1 supervisor-to-student ratio and will hire a dedicated supervisor for Middletown Prairie and Lincoln Trail Elementary to take care of managing the program.
Families who enroll in the YMCA program can expect an increase of about $1000 per child, per school year under the YMCA’s proposal.
Monday’s discussion between board members was lengthy. Using the financial statements provided in the board of education agenda packets, board member Colleen Schultz, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois, figured that the district makes about $250,000 each year on Kid’s Club. However, Chief Financial Business Officer Heather Smith approached the board table to show Schultz that the latest figures show the district made just over $100,000 with Kids Club.
Schultz asked how the district would cover the loss, and if the YMCA would have to pay facility fees to run the program.
Assistant Superintendent Nicole Rummel said that the district does not charge non-profits to use the facilities. Using figures given to the board, Schultz figured that the YMCA could see as much as $500,000 in revenue from after school care alone.
In order to provide the public with accurate information, the Mahomet Daily asked both Schultz and Smith for the figures they cited. Schultz provided her numbers on Wednesday, whereas Smith said she would submit hers on Thursday. On Wednesday Smith was out of town.
The Mahomet Daily also submitted a FOIA request for all financial records of Kids Club for the 2021-22 school year.
On Thursday Smith said via email, “It has come to my attention that there is some information that was requested through a FOIA for Kids Club, that will be sent on Tuesday. I will have to wait until Tuesday to do any kind of reconciliation as well as to what is this year vs. next year’s revenue for Kids Club. The Admin Assistant in charge of billing Kids Club is out until that day on vacation and I really want to confirm things with her first before stating any numbers for sure.
It looks very strange because 2020-2021 is only showing a net profit of $90K for Kids Club, that is why I am thinking that there were some payment issues, which may have caused some of the revenue to go into 2021-2022.”
With this, an article about Kid’s Club financials and Monday’s full discussion will come next week.
Without approving YMCA care, the district was unsure how they offer after school care at the beginning of the year.
Hennesy, Henrichs, Lamb and McComb voted for the measure; Keefe and Schultz voted against.
