Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
Butler Community College’s (BCC) Board of Trustees approved the college’s legal budget for the 2018-2019 school year at their latest board meeting on Tuesday, Aug. 14.
The total legal budget for the new school year is nearly $81 million, nearly a $6 million increase over the last school year’s budget. This increase came from reserves Butler set aside to allow it to expand the 5000 building in Andover, as they are required to leave the 6000 building in Andover High School by the summer of 2020.
“We are going to start work on the Andover project on the 5000 building, and we need the authority to spend the $7 million dollars that we’ve set aside, that we have in reserve, that we committed to that building,” President of Butler Kim Krull said. “So our legal budget this year gives us spending authority … it doesn’t mean we’re going to spend 80 million dollars.”
This move to increase the budget to renovate the Andover campus has not gone without controversy. Kansas District 77 Representative Kristey Williams, who started the “Fair Funding Initiative” to lower Butler’s mill levy to a proportionate level, took issue with the Trustees’ decision to increase presence in Andover and said it “will provide an advantage to 60 percent of BCC’s enrollees that live in Sedgwick County.”
Some have taken issue with Williams’ fight for a lower mill levy for the college, and the Board of Trustees Chair Eileen Dreiling has expressed that the Trustees are fighting for the availability of education.
“There is a movement afoot to harm the educational opportunities for students of all ages in south central Kansas, and I want those in Kansas to know that the Butler Community College Board of Trustees and its leadership are standing on the frontlines to lead the cause against such a movement, and we are prepared to do the real work for real solutions,” Dreiling said in a recent letter to the editor in the Butler County Times-Gazette.