SUPERINTENDENT GETS GO-AHEAD TO STUDY FUND-RAISING METHODS

A school foundation designed to generate funds for Cape Girardeau public schools is on the drawing table.

The Board of Education approved the idea Monday and directed Superintendent Neyland Clark to look at different plans for organization and legal aspects involved in forming a foundation.

"It's not designed to be a booster club," said Board President John Campbell. "A long-term goal might be to create an endowment."

Clark agreed. "It's not designed to put a new floor in the gym or run a campaign," he said. "It affords the board and district some opportunities that normally would not be available."

Board member Ed Thompson said he attended a seminar on public school foundations recently. "One school district bought $100,000 in computers right from the endowment," he said.

Board member Lyle Davis said he has heard a lot of support and interest in the community for a foundation.

"I am certainly in favor of moving in that direction," he said.

Campbell cautioned, "We want to think carefully about how it's organized."

Southeast Missouri State University has a foundation and so does a local private school. Clark said he plans to look at the structure of both those organizations. He also has information from public school foundations throughout the nation.

The school board set the tax rate for the 1993 tax year at $2.87 per $100 assessed valuation: $1.76 for the teachers fund and $1.11 cents for the incidental fund. A building fund, which had been included in school district budgets, was eliminated by Missouri's new funding law.

At the meeting the board also voted to ask the city to abandon an unused alley at the north end of the vocational-technical school property and make it school district property.

District attorney Joe Russell said the property has never been maintained as an alley.

"Actually part of the parking lot is on that 25 feet," he said. "So far as I know all the property owners are in agreement."