CAPE SCHOOL BOARD TO GATHER IN JEFFERSON CITY TUESDAY

The Cape Girardeau Board of Education will meet with state officials next week in an effort to learn more about the Missouri's sweeping new education funding and reform bill.

The board's annual planning session is scheduled Tuesday in Jefferson City.

Superintendent Neyland Clark has been asking state education officials for specifics about how the education bill will impact Cape Girardeau.

Information about state funding will be used as the board discusses when and what construction-related issues might be placed on the Cape Girardeau ballot, Clark said.

Vic Slaughter, director of school finance for Missouri's education department, will meet with the school board and district administrators.

"We are looking for implications of Senate Bill 380 and the distribution of state funds as it relates to Cape Girardeau Public School District," said Clark.

He said provisions of the law change the way budgets are designed and which funds are placed in various accounts.

"Another component of that meeting will be financial implication in Senate Bill 380 for new school construction," Clark said.

Clark said the new law could make it advantageous for the district to enter into a construction project.

"We have some concerns because of what we attempted to do in April and how this may change the direction we may want to take."

In April, voters turned down a $25 million bond issue and building fund levy hike. The proposal included construction of an elementary school, a middle school, an addition to Jefferson School and improvements to other schools.

School board members and Clark have indicated an interest in bringing a construction proposal back before voters.

"We are going to talk about what happened and what may be possible in the fall or in 1994," Clark said. "Following the election, we kept hearing it was too much, too big. We will likely talk about, if we did break it out what we might look at."

While in Jefferson City, Clark said, the board also will meet with Jerry Valentine, an expert on performance-based evaluation from the University of Missouri.

"We are looking at shifting some of our processes concerning evaluation of teachers and administrators," Clark said.

A representative of Missouri's School Board Association will meet with the board to discuss the district's newly compiled policy manual.