BOE again mulls enrollment polic

BOE again mulls enrollment policy

Jeremy Nash news-herald.net

Loudon County Board of Education on Thursday approved various policies at its meeting, but the one that garnered the most attention has been discussed for months.

Board members again talked about policy 6.204, which addresses school attendance of non-resident students.

“I think it’s appropriate for us to add the verbiage of if a person is a resident or property owner,” Scott Newman, board member, said at the meeting. “Now I will open for discussion is do we go forward and say a property owner with a resident on that property? That’s kind of another thing that we could look at. ... That keeps somebody from going and buying an acre of land and saying, ‘Hey, I’m a property owner.’ I think that was some concern some people had.”

The current policy reads no new out-of-county students are allowed to enroll after the 2010-11 school year. Attendance of out-of-county students is dependent upon room availability and teaching capacity.

During Thursday’s meeting, school board member Gary Ubben said the board shouldn’t rush into simply changing a couple words. Instead, the board should focus on the entire policy.

“We’re not the only district in the world that struggles with this particular problem and there are a lot of good examples out there of how people have dealt with this issue for in-county students or out-of-county students or residents or non-residents or the property issue, and I really think we would be wise in looking at that and studying it a little bit more,” Ubben said. “That’s a long-term solution. Now we’ve got some short-term problems right now tonight that we need to deal with and I think we need to address those as well, but I think we need to stand back and take a longer look at it than just changing a word here or there.”

Board members passed four of seven hardship cases presented to them Thursday after initial discussion at the workshop earlier that day. One included a grandmother who lives inside Loudon bringing her granddaughter back into the system after leaving with family to Ohio. Another included a family who owned land inside the county and planned to move there in the future. Two of the seven presented failed for lack of a motion.

“Whatever action we take tonight we need to be careful about that because prior meetings we’ve turned people down with these same circumstances,” LeRoy Tate, board member, said.

“I see your point, but we’ve already done that,” Newman said. “We’ve allowed people to come in. I go back a couple of years ago we allowed the Thompsons to bring a child in and then last month the board voted — I didn’t, I voted to — but they voted not to let some more property owners bring their kids in, and so I think we’ve already set that stage. I’m with Dr. Ubben, I want to make sure we fix it and fix it right.

“I think the board as a whole is kind of leaning toward putting that verbiage in there as a resident or property owner and I think we’ve got some folks that are in limbo right now that we need (to) take care of,” he added.

Board members in June turned down three families asking for enrollment.

“I think that we should let the folks that own property come into us and be in our school system,” Newman said. “I also think that we need to go back and look and maybe open up the siblings and grandfather in the siblings, and we’re not talking 20-30 kids, we’re probably talking four or five throughout the year.”

The argument ultimately boiled down to money, Newman said. If a family pays property taxes it should be allowed to enroll children into Loudon County Schools.

Board member Craig Simon agreed.

“The argument that people are going to buy whatever, a tenth of an acre, it matters not because the only real anchor you have here is property ownership and property taxes,” Simon said. “Like Scotty said, it’s all about money. If you want to say, ‘Hey, this guy’s not paying enough taxes because he just has a doghouse in Loudon County,’ give me a better idea.

“We’ve been abused over this policy, I mean waylaid like no else, but at the end of the day if you’re putting money into this system, you get my vote,” he added.

Ubben and Simon motioned and seconded, respectively, to bring policy 6.204 up for discussion at the September workshop. Newman was the lone opposing vote.

In other news, Loudon County Board of Education:

• Approved a $2,500 Read to be Ready grant, a $190,732 five-year 21st Century Community Learning Center grant, a $10,000 Read to be Ready coaching grant, a $152,180 safe schools grant and a $166,040 vocational rehabilitation grant.

• Passed a pay application of $34,675 for the North Middle School fine arts building.

• Authorized budget amendments in Funds 141, 142 and 143.

• Approved first reading for policies covering insurance management, transcript alteration, application and employment, background investigations, recommendations and file transfers, family and medical leave act, qualifications and duties of the director of schools, zero tolerance offenses, corporal punishment and child abuse and neglect. Board members tabled a policy on code behavior and discipline, and passed the first reading and waived the second reading for a policy on compensation guides and contracts.

• Decided to surplus old Greenback School playground equipment.

• Authorized $7,000 to sod and sprig the Philadelphia Elementary School baseball outfield.