There was some good news and bad news about state aid for the Seneca School District at the school board meeting Monday night.

Seneca School District Administrator Dave Boland started with the bad news. The district’s general aid from the state in this school year of 2015-16 is about $80,000 less than it was in the previous school year of 2014-15.

The good news for the district is that categorical aid from the state will increase about $31,000 in this school year over the amounts received in the previous school year. Specifically, sparsity aid will increase by about $18,000 and transportation aid will increase $13,000. When general aid and categorical aid numbers are combined the net decrease in state aid to the district for the coming school year of 2015-16 is about $50,000, according to Boland.

The district administrator also told the board about a potentially costly water leak in the school that was detected. The maintenance staff, along with staff from the township and John Anderson, shut off water to the building and were able to find and stop the leak from a corroded water pipe into the building.

The cost of fixing the problem will be paid by the district or the township depending on where exactly the defective pipe is located. Boland informed the board the leak would probably be on the district’s portion of the pipe and the district would then have to pay for the cost of repairing it.

The board selected longtime hunter safety instructor Bob Chambers for the Seneca School District Monthly Recognition Award. Chambers has been an instructor in the hunter safety course for many decades and the class he taught this fall will be the last he teaches.

In other business, the Seneca School Board:

• approved the school district’s academic standards as mandated by recent state law

• received an update on the playground project progress

• heard that the district was randomly selected to have a Civil Rights Review in January, looking at board policies to make sure they were non-discriminatory

• heard a presentation from Miriam Simons and Chanda Chellevold on the opportunities for the district at the Gays Mills Swimming Pool in the future