001call this May 5th work session to order. Uh first we need to approve the agenda and I need a motion to do so. So moved Mr. Tulle. Second Mr. Hammond. All in favor passes four to zero. Next we have superintendent report. Thank you board members. Thank you staff for being here. Um few things for the superintendent report tonight. Of course probably the the thing that any student can tell you uh in our school system uh we have 14 days remaining and some of the students would probably say 13 and a half I think. Right. Um two of those may be at my home. But uh so we appreciate the great work that staff continues to do as we close out a wonderful school year that's been full of accolades and accomplishments and look forward to
002celebrating our seniors. As the board knows, we do graduation May the 23rd at Akens Ford Arena uh this year and OC will graduate at 3 pm and North will follow at 6 pm. Of course, board members, you're also aware that we've kicked off our honors programs uh with our 5% breakfast for both Okone and North recently and got to celebrate those uh distinguished graduates or soon to be graduates uh that rate in the top 5% of our school district and many more honors nights and recognitions to follow for not only those seniors but many many more of our students. Want to thank the board and staff members uh families and friends that joined us at 4 pm for our retiring educators uh celebration. Uh 19 employees with nearly 400 years of service to Okone County
003Schools uh that had held several goals several roles rather uh throughout the years but the one goal of just supporting our students and that shone through with the smiles and celebration. So, I appreciate the board being there. That means a lot to our our staff and our uh their families that you were there to to take part and celebrate uh in those celebrations. Uh also want to point out that we also had a recently our work-based learning, employer, and mentor appreciation reception. uh 122 students, uh 80 different businesses, uh 31,730 hours, and no, I did not count all those myself, of uh opportunities for our students, uh totaling an investment, uh workplace skills investment from our community of over $300,000. So, uh, tremendous opportunities and experiences for our students to, uh, continue their hands-on learning.
004It's a busy month of May and we have again lots of celebrations. Uh, just a few that we want to point out that hopefully you've already seen. May 1st was school principal day. So, we thank all the principles in the room once again for their outstanding leadership of our schools. We also celebrated school lunch hero day and hopefully you saw that on social media where we celebrated our outstanding cafeteria workers uh that work so hard each day for our students. Uh this week is teacher appreciation week and so our schools have started kicking off their celebrations uh with the tremendous support of our families and uh business partners to recognize our hardworking teachers. Uh this week is also school nurse appreciation uh day. That's going to be middle of the week. And then we also
005will celebrate speech and language pathologist appreciation day uh on the 18th of May. So lots of things going on in the district. Want to congratulate some of our staff members. uh Miss Jennifer Whitaker who was approved recently as our incoming chief academic officer and also Miss Sarah Bailey uh who the board approved to be the next principal of High Scholes Elementary School. We appreciate their leadership, all they've done and what we know will do going forward. Um few more celebrations. Uh we have been notified uh here recently by the governor's office of student achievement uh that we have several schools that have received what we call the single statewide accountability system awards and those recognize schools for high academic performance and growth. Those were Column Ferry, High Scholes, Malcolm Bridge, and Rocky Branch elementary schools
006along with Malcolm Bridge and Okone Middle School as well as North Okone and Okone high schools. We also uh had nine schools recognized recently by the Georgia Department of Education uh as math leaders and had a ceremony that uh again Steve documented for us and put out on social media uh to celebrate those nine schools again having high achievement uh through our students. Uh one thing I'd love to point out from an athletic standpoint uh cue Mr. Carter at any point here. Uh, North Oak County Gymnastics won its sixth straight state championship. Mr. Carter, there you go. Uh, my notes say this has never been done in Georgia High School gymnastics, uh, dating back to 1988. Uh, so quite an achievement there. And we have many more teams that are still involved in athletic endeavors
007and playoffs. And so we want to wish them the best as they continue to represent OKone. So well, we did also have an opportunity to celebrate some individual students. Uh recently we had Cadence U Keith who was a student at Okone County High School or is a student at Okon County High School who earned a US Naval Academy appointment. uh and uh Representative Mike Collins was on hand to provide that appointment and her friends and family and Mr. Stevens and his staff did a wonderful job making that just an outstanding ceremony. Uh we've celebrated many of those over the years. U and this one was a special one as well. So congratulations to Cadence and uh all the educators and family members that poured into her as well. And that will wrap up the superintendent's
008report at this time unless there's any questions. Thank you, Dr. Branch. Any questions? Next, we have presentations and discussions and we'll start with the teaching and learning report. Dr. Stansel. Good evening board members and Dr. Branch. The May 2025 teaching and learning report contains two items of information and one action item. The first item of information is our future educators signing day. Congratulations to the seniors from OKone County and North Okone high schools who participated in future educator signing day at the civic center. These students signed letters of commitment to pursue a career in education. Okone County Schools is excited to see how these individuals will impact the next generation of students. The second item of information, as Dr. branch already mentioned is the work-based learning mentor appreciation banquet. The annual banquet was held on
009Thursday, April 24th at the civic center. A total of 122 students from North Okone and Okone County high schools participated in work-based learning this school year and a total of 80 businesses partnered with this program to provide this opportunity to our students. At the banquet, Urgent Care of OKone and University Blood and Cancer Center were recognized as our employers of the year. Our action item for the May board of education meeting is the CTAE local plan and grants. Each year, the OCS career technical and agricultural education department has the opportunity to apply for federal funding through the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Technical Education Act and several state grants for the purpose of improving our CTAE programs. The superintendent's recommendation is for the board of education to approve the FY26 CTAE local plan at the
010May 12th, 2025 board of education meeting. And that concludes the teaching and learning report. Unless there are any questions. Any questions? I'm going to start with a quick comment and then a question. This is bittersweet because I think it may be your last presentation to us and it is. We're so grateful to you for all of your work in so many capacities here in Okona County Schools. You've done a phenomenal job. And when it comes to the CTE opportunities, I'm a big proponent of that because I think it's great when we can have young people experience many different kind of workforce readiness options so that when they graduate, they know maybe which fields they want to go into. So the more students we can get to do a CTA class, the better. How many like
011what percentage would you say currently participates in a CTE class? Um in both of our high schools around 99% of our students participate in CTA courses. So um almost all of our students have um participate at some level in CTE. That's great. Love to hear it. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you, Dr. Sansel. All right. Thank you. Next we have student services. Dr. Yansy. Good evening, Don Branch and board members. The May 2025 student services report includes two items of information and one action item. The first item of information, as Dr. Branch mentioned, our upcoming graduation ceremonies on May 23rd. Both Okone County High School and North Okoney High School will graduate at Akens Ford Arena on May 23rd. Okony's graduation will begin at 3 p.m. and North Okoney's graduation will start at 6 pm.
012I'd like to take this opportunity to congratulate our 2025 graduates. We continue to be amazed at all our graduates accomplish as students at OKON in within our school system and we're excited to see uh what the future holds for all of them. In addition, I would also like to say thank you to Mr. Stevens and Mr. Carter and their teams as we prepared for a new venue and for graduations. uh their dedication and efforts uh have not gone unnoticed. So, thank you. The second item of information pertains to our school resource officer program. Since our last meeting, Corporal Richards, who was assigned to North Oak County High School, has taken a leave of absence, but is scheduled to return to his role later this month during his absence. Deputy Shook, has joined uh the SRO
013program and is serving North Oak County High School during Corporal Richard's absence. Sheriff Hail and his team continue to recruit qualified deputies for our SRO positions based on the criteria jointly established with OKone County Schools. New deputies will be added as soon as qualified candidates become available and we'll continue to keep you updated as our SRO program continues to grow. Student services has one action item for May for the May 5th board of education work session. The action item is an out ofstate field trip. The trip is for Okon County High School girls basketball team to travel to Spartanberg, South Carolina. The superintendent's recommendation is to approve the out ofstate field trip as presented. And this concludes student services report unless you have any questions. Questions? I have a quick SRO question. Just for a
014reminder for the public, what are the stats now as far as which schools have an SRO, which are outstanding, and is there currently a time frame or recruitment effort to get those people in place maybe by the beginning of school? Have they indicated the possibility of that? Yes, sir. They'll all be back at at the start of the school year, and they're just two schools. If you remember last month, I reported on Dove Creek Middle and then today, North Oak County. But he does have a a replacement. and uh Deputy Shook will go into another school when the school year opens. Okay, great. Thank you. Yes, sir. Thanks. We have technology, Mr. McCullers. Thank you, Mr. Ransom. Good evening, board members. Dr. Branch, Coney County Schools technology services report for May 5th includes twoformational items
015and no action items. Information item number one, student and staff device update. Over the past few weeks, the technology operations team has been hard at work preparing new Chromebooks, laptops, and desktop devices for our students and staff as a part of our yearly replacement cycle. This process includes onboarding our devices into our inventory system, conducting quality checks, and meeting with end users to ensure smooth account and data migrations. Our goals this year were to complete student Chromebook swaps prior to Georgia Milestones testing and to replace staff laptops before the end of the school year. I'm pleased to report that both of those goals will be achieved. We swapped 204 student Chromebooks, 259 staff laptops, and 119 desktop computers. Additionally, two CTIE labs, one at each high school, will receive new desktop computers during post planning.
016Special thank you goes out to Lisa Bell, Lisa Lombardo, Christy Tulle, Katie Dixon, and all of our school-based TSTs for their dedication and teamwork in making this transition seamless. Information item number two, technology support for state assessments. Technology services plays an essential role in supporting the preparation and administration of state assessments including the Georgia milestones integrade and then of course assessments the Georgia alternate assessment 2.0 and the WEDA access and alternate access for ELLLs to ensure a secure and successful testing experience. Technology services coordinated efforts across multiple teams. The network team prepared our testing servers and optimized connectivity. The technology operations team conducted student device readiness checks at each school and our instructional technology specialists worked alongside school administrators to coordinate practice test. This year, Okone County Schools will successfully facilitate 28,795 test sessions across
017these five major states test. Special recognition goes to Mr. Chris Plameumber, director of technology and assessment for his outstanding organizational leadership throughout each testing window. And with that, that concludes the technology service report. Does she have any Questions. Thank you, Mr. Pers. Yes, sir. Next, we have operations from Dr. White. Good evening, board members and Dr. Branch. Operations has four items of information this evening and one action item for this month's regular session. The firstformational item for operations is an update on our energy report. Our kilowatt usage per day for a thousand square feet has been updated for the month of April. The secondformational item is our transportation update. For the previous month, we had 34 field trips, 54 athletic trips, 27 special education trips, 152 buses deployed for a total of 7,781 miles. Our
018third item of information is an update on school nutrition participation for the month of April. Board members, you'll see that we saw an increase in participation for breakfast of 2% and an increase of lunch participation of 1.52% as compared to April of 2024. The fourth item of information is an update on bus driver training. The transportation department hosts quarterly meetings with all drivers to focus on safety updates and procedures. The OCS transportation department recently won a competitive opportunity to partner with the Georgia Department of Public Safety to provide a training simulator to all bus drivers to focus on situational awareness and safety. This allowed drivers to be exposed to a variety of real world scenarios and admittedly have a little fun. Our action item for next week's board meeting are activity buses. These are 14
019passenger vehicles that do not require a CDL to transport students. These vehicles will be used by a variety of student organizations that do not require a full-size school bus and give us greater flexibility for transporting students. Superintendent's recommendation should the board of education to approve Rush Truck Centers with a bid of $252,000 based on state contract pricing. This project would be paid for using ELOST and general fund dollars. Board members, we also have an RFP out currently for new ovens at North Okone High School. And this will conclude the operations report unless there are any questions. What kind of activities will those smaller buses be used for? Are we talking like smaller athletic teams or Yes, sir. So, smaller teams like golf, a lot a range of our academic teams, uh, special education does trips
020during the day as well. So, we're really going to have a lot more flexibility with that. Okay. Thank you. Yes, sir. You said no CDL required, right? So, no city regular driver's license. Uh, it does, but they do have to go through a training through our transportation department and then they can take those vehicles as needed. Okay. Thank you. How many is it? Uh, two buses. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. White. Mr. Rickson, good evening. The Aona County Schools operations and facilities May 5th, 2025 board of education report contains two items of information and three action items for the May 12th, 2025 board meeting. First of item information is the April league custodian meeting was held on Thursday, April 3rd and was hosted by the team at Okone County Elementary School. The team discussed
021equipment maintenance, proper cleaning of vomit and SMO, our our uh custodial partner, offered a safety topic that they presented. Our custodial teams are be commended for their rigorous work ensuring that our schools are clean for health. Second item information is construction update. First is the district-wide generator project. As you can see, we've got a new generator sitting there that believe that's that's High Scholes. Uh and then to the right, uh just a reminder, this project also includes a data center, uh reliability improvements. Uh part of that was new air conditioning for the data center, and as you can see in the photograph, that's been installed. Next is our Coney County High School practice field lighting. I've confirmed with the vendor today that uh the lights are um scheduled to arrive the last week of this
022month and installation will begin uh early June. We have three items uh three action items this month. The first is uh north of Coney High door hardware improvements. This is superintendent's recommendation for the board of education to approve classic city doors for the hardware for hardware and door enhancement project for a proposal cost of $83,52320 at the May 12th, 2025 board meeting. This project will be paid for using ELOS and general fund dollars. This will upgrade the hardware so it matches the other schools in our district. Action item number two is Okone High School parking lot edition. It's a superintendent's recommendation for is for the board of education to approve Smith and Co. Incorporated for the Okone High School parking lot edition project for a proposal cost of $822,91646 at May at the May 12th
0232025 board meeting. This project will be paid for using ELOS and general fund dollars. This project will add 194 spaces so uh to the Okoney High uh student spaces for Okone High which will bring the two schools uh with a similar number of parking spaces. Third item, third action item is the maintenance facility paving. The superintendent's recommendation is for board of education to approve Magnum paving for the maintenance paving maintenance facility paving project for a proposal cost of $192,414 at the May 12th, 2025 board meeting. This project will be paid for using ELOS and general fund dollars. The uh maintenance is our only facility left that does is doesn't have a paved lot. This will give us a good uh a safer place to to park our vehicles and also to store materials and equipment.
024That concludes the uh operate the um facilities report unless there are any questions. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Rickson. Next we have human resources. Mr. Kofer. Good evening board members and Dr. Branch. Human resources report for this evening contains one item of information and one action item for this evening. Our first item of information is the retiring uh educators reception that we held just a few hours ago. We gathered to celebrate a truly special occasion, our annual teacher retirement reception. This year we had the distinct honor of recognizing 19 exceptional educators whose remarkable achievements and steadfast dedication have shaped the lives of countless students. Each of these individuals has contributed significantly to the success and spirit of Okon County Schools and together they represent nearly 400 years of combined service. Their unwavering commitment to education
025and impact on generations of learners have left an enduring legacy not only within our school community but well beyond it. We are deeply grateful for their service and proud to have had them as part of our educational family. Our action item for this evening is an update on our superintendent search agency. Board members at your direction, human resources was tasked with gathering information on search agencies that specialize in superintendent searches. In response, we provided you with information on the two most prominent agencies operating within the state of Georgia, the Georgia School Boards Association and the Georgia Leadership Associates. After your careful consideration of both firms and a review of a provided by our school board attorney, we bring forward tonight's action item at your request to formally approve Georgia Leadership Associates as the selected search
026agency to assist in identifying the next superintendent for Okone County Schools. The search will be led by two highly respected educational leaders, Dr. Alan McCannan, retired superintendent of Madison County Schools, and Mr. Wes Taylor, retired superintendent of Loun County Schools. Both bring a wealth of experience and a deep knowledge of Georgia's educational landscape that will help ensure a successful and wellexecuted search process. This concludes human resources report for this evening unless there are any questions. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Ker. Thanks. We have communications. Mr. Carpet. Thank you, Mr. Ransom. Good evening, board members and Dr. Branch. The communications report this evening contains two items of information. The first is April social media information. Okone County Schools had 45 social media posts in April with an average of 11,739 views. The top post for April
027was the employee service recognition that took place at the April 21st board meeting. That post was viewed 28,700 times. Our team also followed up that evening by highlighting Mr. Robert Harris of Colum Ferry Elementary and the transportation department for his 52 years of service to the district. That post was viewed just shy of 27,000 times and was shared 80 times. Those two posts ranked numbers one and three for the month. For the month of April, nine of the posts were viewed more than 22,000 times. Another 10 were viewed more than 10,000 times. Those 19 posts averaged more than 19,500 views. Four of those 19 posts were generated from recognitions at board meetings in April and averaged 16,700 views. Board members, thank you once again for carving out time in board me board meetings to recognize
028the great things going on in our schools with student, staff, and leaders. Coney County Schools gained 72 followers to social media in April, giving the district 22,918 across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. In addition, the OCS newsletter released on April 30th at 8,159 unique opens, which is a rate of 67.1%. The industry average for education is 39%. We thank the parents, students, community members, businesses, and media outlets that follow and engage with our social media accounts. The second item of information is the April highlights [Music] video. Heat. Heat. N. [Music] board members. As you can see, another great month of in our in our schools around Okone County. That concludes communications unless you have any questions for me. Any questions? Thank you, Mr. Coquit. Business services, Mr. Adams. Uh, good evening board members and Dr. Branch.
029Business services would like to take a brief moment to update you regarding the fiscal year 26 tenative budget. Due to a statewide software challenge in the tax commissioner's office, the tax digest numbers have not yet been finalized. As a result, this critical data is not currently available and we are unable to present the tenative budget as planned this evening. We have been in regular communication with our tax commissioner who has been very responsive and is working diligently to provide us with the necessary information as soon as it becomes available. The tax digest is a key factor in accurately projecting our revenue for the upcoming fiscal year. Proceeding without it would be premature and could result in inaccuracies that we want to avoid. We remain committed to transparency and accuracy in our budgeting process. Once we
030have received the final finalized tax digest data, we will adjust our schedule and ensure that the tenative budget is brought before the board in a timely manner for review and discussion. Thank you for your understanding and continue to support. And that concludes my update unless there are any questions. They have an idea of what time maybe they'll have it available. I don't know. Um maybe this week is what last report we got, but they said that last week too. So, we'll see. I say I like the way you said maybe, Peter. That was very promising. When, what is the deadline? When do we really need to have this budget through its process, what kind of time frame are we working with? We we'll have to have discussions with you all about if we want to
031proceed with just doing an S like we've done in the past, projecting the the revenue and move forward. But with the changes in the HB581, we thought it'd be prudent to wait and see what the taxis numbers came out to be so we can accurately predict what the roll back rates will be for the county. Any other questions? Thank you, sir. Thank you. Next, we have action items. Dr. Branch. Uh, yes, sir. You heard the report from Mr. Kofer. So, we would recommend uh GLA, the superintendent search agency, as presented. Need a motion to do so. Mr. Tulle, Miss Parish. All in favor? Passes. 4 Z. We do need uh I have a need to enter an executive session to discuss personnel matters and I need a motion to do so. I'll make a motion
032that the board will adjourn to executive session to discuss or deliberate upon personnel matters as described on the affidavit to be attached to the minutes. Second, Miss Parish, Mr. Hammond. All in favor? Passes 40. We are adjourned.