County BOE waits on student policy
 
Policy 6.204, Attendance of Non-Resident Students, has not allowed additional out-of-county students to enroll after the 2010-11 school year.
 
More information could be brought back to the board in a month or two, but Vance said he was in no rush.
 
“Myself personally I’m not for it,” William Jenkins, board chairman, said. “Though in a way it could bring us up in some of our funds from the state, I personally can’t support it just because of the policy that we put in effect I think it was back in 2011.”
Jenkins wasn’t the only opposition.
 
Community members expressed concerns, including educator, parent and taxpayer Kim Bridges.
 
“I know from experience the difference between three to five students what they need in the classroom. I’ve taught large classes, I’ve taught small,” Bridges said during the meeting. “Speaking from experience I know that smaller classes allow for more one on one, more interaction between teacher and peers, stronger relationships, more time to address individual student needs and higher academic gain.”
 
Wayne Schnell agreed.
 
“I would prefer not to fill up the classroom,” Schnell said. “The more time teachers have to work with their students the better. So why should we bring in students from another county and lessen the time? Also, what happens if one of the students has to have something for special needs once they come into the school system? How much is that going to cost us? Special needs students could be a tremendous burden on our budget.”

BOE passes budget

The coming year’s budget is projected to have $40.76 million in expenditures and an ending fund balance of $1.2 million. Highlights include a 2 percent raise for teachers at $476,000, a step raise at $280,000, additional support for school nurses at $52,800 and an increase in the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System at $280,000.
 
Board members Scott Newman and Bobby Johnson Jr. motioned and seconded, respectively, with the vote passing 10-0.
 
“I think that the board’s intention is to show them with a 2 percent raise that even during challenging fiscal times they’re willing to put their money where their mouth is in order to help keep salaries competitive with surrounding counties, especially those districts that are knocking on the door for those teachers,” Vance said.
 
With dwindling reserves, Vance said he was worried about the coming 2019-20 school year budget.
 
“I believe that lack of growth money over the past several years has put the board in an awkward position,” Vance said, noting the 2018-19 year should be fine. “... So if there’s not a lot of new revenue from the funding body, that’s going to be an area of concern. That’s part of the reason that I’ve brought up non-resident students. I think that that’s a potential way to put new revenue into the current deficit school budget, and I think that there’s got to be a happy medium somewhere along the way.”
 
The BOE asked Vance to request $750,000 in new money from the county to offset expenses in the budget. Vance plans to make the request Wednesday during a Loudon County Budget Committee meeting.
 
“We believe there’s about $350,000 in growth money that the school system would receive if we received the same pennies next year that we receive this year, and so I think that the school board’s saying we have not received growth money in years past, so give us that growth money and the growth money from this year in order to help us create a budget for next year that will be more sustainable,” Vance said.
 
Johnson believes asking for new money is fair to consider.
 
“We didn’t pull that money out of the air,” Johnson said. “What we were doing was kind of looking at the growth money the past couple of years and that’s another reason that we looked at the tuition of out-of-county kids is because we’re paying for the teacher in there, we thought it could offset the cost.”

Meeting policy change?

Board members with a 6-4 vote passed the first reading of a change change to its meeting policy.
 
Board member LeRoy Tate and Johnson motioned and seconded, with board members Newman, Gary Ubben, Kenny Ridings and Brian Brown opposing. Tate made the motion to end a long-running discussion of the policy that dates back months.
 
The board in September attempted to change the policy, but failed during the first reading with a 5-4 vote.
 
“That’s the way we’ve always been, that’s the way we were elected to be,” Newman said during the meeting. “I know that people are busy, I’m a busy person too, sometimes I might have to miss workshops. My thing would be that if you go to the one night that we’d make sure a week ahead of time that not only us but the public has all the information that’s going to be on the agenda and I think that would clear up a lot of grumblings too.”
 
A second reading will occur in June. If passed, workshops and meetings would be held on the same day. Current policy states the board must meet on the first Thursday of the month for workshops and the following Thursday for meetings.
 
“Now the board, of course, if we’ve got something that we need to meet on, we can go,” Johnson said. “I like the one night. I think it gives plenty of time. I think we have plenty of time to go over things. I research everything, and if I’ve got a question I get with Jason and he gets me information. I think it’s plenty of time. Some of the other ones might not agree, but that’s the way I voted because I thought we have plenty of time.”
 
Jenkins hopes the policy discussion will soon be put to rest.
 
“We’ve had many board members want to bring it up one last time just to go ahead and put it to bed,” Jenkins said. “As of right now it sounds like the majority of the board is wanting to go with the one day having both our workshop and our regular meeting into one day. Again, that’s still subject to change next month whenever we vote on it again.”
 
In other news, Loudon County Board of Education:
 
• Approved second and final reading for policies on special programs, promotion and retention, graduation requirements, graduation activities, recommendations and file transfers, qualifications and duties of the director of schools, attendance, alternative special programs, medicines and glucagon and diazepam (diastat).
 
• Agreed to count TNReady exams only if it positively impacted a student’s grade.
 
• Passed a 10-cent raise in meal prices, which will cost $1.35 for breakfast in pre-K to 12th grade, $2.25 for lunch in pre-K to fifth grade, $2.50 for lunch in sixth grade to 12th grade, and adult breakfast $2 and lunch $3.25.
 
• Moved forward with school fees for the 2018-19 year at Loudon High and Greenback schools.

County BOE takes wrong approach

News Herald In Our Opinion

For more than a year, Loudon County Board of Education has openly violated its own policy on meeting times.
 
Policy requires regular meetings be held the second Thursday of the month and workshops the first Thursday of the month “unless changed by the consensus of the board.” The BOE has instead routinely held both meetings on the second Thursday, with the workshop at 4:30 p.m. and the regular meeting at 7 p.m.
 
BOE members finally returned this month to following the policy, meeting for a workshop May 3 and a regularly scheduled meeting a week later.
 
But during the workshop, BOE member Bobby Johnson Jr. asked that a vote be held the following week to “put to rest” the issue of meetings being held in violation of the policy. The board voted 6-4 during a first reading Thursday to change the policy and move both meetings to the same day of the month.
 
Six BOE members decided it was too difficult to simply follow a policy that has been in place for about six years, opting instead to change the policy to fit their violation.
 
Ironically, the BOE already voted in September about changing the policy. That vote — which failed 5-4 — should have been the end. Yet the BOE continued violating the policy for months after voting not to change it.
 
Jason Vance, director of schools, has argued on multiple occasions that moving the meetings to the same day changes nothing in the decision-making process. What Vance misses in his argument is that squeezing two meetings on the same day breaks a promise made to taxpayers, students and their families. Holding meetings a week apart allows county residents to learn about pending decisions that will impact the county school system and voice concerns or support to board members who have been elected to represent them before final votes are cast.
 
If a meeting is held mere hours after a workshop, the BOE can introduce a change and vote on it before residents even know what is going on.
 
While some BOE members apparently feel they have plenty of time to mull decisions as they eat dinner between the workshop and meeting, they aren’t considering whether it allows taxpayers — the people who pay for that meal they’re eating — adequate notice of issues brought before the board.
 
Nearly every governing body in Loudon County, cities included, hold meetings and workshops on different days. If county BOE members have so many scheduling conflicts that they can’t find time to meet on separate days during a month then maybe it is time to consider giving up the position to someone who can.
 
When the BOE considers the policy at its June meeting, we urge members to make the right decision and vote against the change.

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5/21/18