001I'd like to welcome everybody to the county board of education regular board meeting 26 2026 5:30 p.m. Central office call to order and roll call >> here. Drew >> here. >> Cody >> here. >> Chair's here. >> Uh approve agenda and add a dinner. Need a motion and second. >> We'll be approving the agenda and what? >> The agenda number. >> Yes, sir. Make the Second >> Drew. >> Hi. >> Cody. >> Hi. >> EST. >> Hi. >> Chairman Braxton. >> Hi. >> The communications at this time prayer by Mr. Braxton. >> Father, we come to you now in the name of Jesus. We lift up all the students that are getting ready to graduate. We just speak your word over their lives Jeremiah 29:11. You said you know the thoughts that you think toward
002them thoughts of peace and not of evil to give them the future. So we speak that over them now in the name of Jesus over their families. We pray Lord that safety for all the events that they'll be involved in and Lord just open doors for them and let them flourish prosper in life in the name of Jesus. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> Superintendent Communications, Dr. Taylor. Okay. As everybody knows, we're wrapping the school year up. We uh we have just a few days left and testing is complete, I think, for the most part, isn't it, Dr. >> 99.5 maybe make up maybe a makeup or two to
003complete. looking forward to uh look forward to some good test results. And we have a state champion uh from track and field this last weekend, Miss Jojo Schmill. That's the best I can pronounce her her last name. Anyway, she's a a two year two year in a row state champion on track and field. So we're going to have her over to uh to honor her at a upcoming board meeting. So really proud of her. And then B is just need acknowledgement of report on personnel and employment authorization. At this time, treasury report MV fund. We had seen from our tax payments, special revenue, we had grant reimbursements. We have someational expenses in accounts. Uh construction fund, we had some activity related to our athletic project. Uh debt service, we're wrapping up some of our last
004bond payments for the year. Uh food service have reimbursements. And for general fund, we have an ending fund balance of approximately 12.58 million. >> Any questions for Mr. >> Thank you. No public comment. Uh actions by consent. Look through actions by consent. We need a motion and a second on those. And that 4, the addendum will be also on the motion. Motion by Drew. I'll second motion. Cody, I cherx. Hi, Drew. actions with discussion discuss or take action on the budget for26 2027. >> So it's budget time again. We're in our tenative cycle for budget. Starting with our expenses, our normal expenses, some of our largest ones are salaries and rent, utilities, insurance, maintenance of our buildings and our transportation fleet. Uh some needs for 27 that we see some bleachers for both PKI and
005PKP. Those are getting pretty worn match for wrestling and the cafeteria at Whitley Elementary. So to highlight some of our revenues in general fund, we're getting a little bit of bump in our seat guaranteed base at $40 per student. We estimate that to bring in around $92,000. Next year could be just a little bit more than that, but I always estimate conservatively. our revenue and live taxes back in the fall. That was one of those it's money that we get in lie of not getting a federal where the federal government owns so much of our land. They don't pay taxes. This is money they give us in place of that. We're in lie of that. Last year um we thought we weren't getting that. So when we would normally get over 200,000 we were we
006had received 14,000. We thought that was it for the year. that ended up we got a check in December and a check here recently in the last few weeks. So for FY26 it was actually $246,000. So that was money we weren't banking on. So we're very very happy about that. Looking at these two together it almost would fund a raise for us for next year as well. I wanted to highlight that. Our total estimated budget for FY27 is around 27 million. If Um, we don't do anything special. Our contingency would be around 6.8%. Um, looking at raises, if we were to give a 1% raise, it would cost us around 151,000. A 2% raise 303,000 and a 3% 455,000. Our step raises are already built in the the budget with that 6.8% contingency. This would
007just be on top of races. So, our revenue and lo taxes and our additional bump and seek would go a long way toward those. Our contingency with raises, if we only go the step raises, like I said, it's already built in the budget of 6.8% is where we think we would land with our contingency. A 1% would drop us down to 6.3, a 2% down to 5.8. and 3% around 5.2. Um, we're always looking at how we can save money and do things a different way. Um, our athletic director is retiring this year, so we've looked at a scenario potentially reassigning some of those duties to some of the admin that we already have currently on staff. Um, for our retirement of our athletic directors, we looked possibly reassigning those duties to our director of
008operations, taking the transportation department off of the director of operations and reassigning those. This position would still have our buildings and grounds under their title. Also, the transportation director duties reassigned for a stop, the transportation assistant or the clerk duties reassigned for a stop and the other duties assigned to other admin. increase in extra service percentage for those extra duties. Um, supervision of nurses assigned to DP, virtual school principal assigned to DPP, personnel trainings assigned to our dose, substitute interviews, hiring and trainings assigned to our director of districtwide services. We've had previous reductions few years ago. We lost our program assistant and at that time myself and the director of federal programs took that job split all the duties and assumed all those at that time and I'll go through all that more in detail
009in our further slides here but we're requesting to make these changes current for June 1st to cover all those duties due to retirement and Senate Bill director of operations. The extra duties assigned would be It goes along with the athletic director duties along with keeping our building and grounds duties. our DPP um would head up our virtual school which we're looking at ramping up and trying to get more students back into that program which would in turn be more funding for our district and then also the supervision of school nurses. are those with handle our personnel trainings that we're required to um have all of our staff classified and certified take those trainings every year and maintain records on those to make sure everybody is um receiving those trainings. Our director district districtwide services would
010handle all of our substitute interviews and trainings and vet all those folks to make sure that they're ready to go out into the classroom so they can be very successful for our students in our district. Our um coordinator preschool that also assumed our federal program duties. Like I said, we took that program assistant duty program assistant position split those duties and that position assumed part of those. They do purchase order processing from the request all the way to making the purchase order and giving people permission to make that purchase, coming back reviewing invoices and making sure they're okay to be paid for all of those federal grants. I assumed the other half of that job as well. This is the grants that I do all that for. I also assume duties of entering our fixed
011assets. And so the transportation department's a is a very very large job. If we were to reassign those duties or human resources person or clerk, she would take over the transportation director duties for a soft and transportation involves a lot. Our admin assistant or reporter would assume the clerk duties that goes with that position. Okay, so now getting to what it cost us. So going back to what we had and how we've realigned it. This position the 39,000 is a position that we reduced had already reduced the athletic director of retirement and our drug testing stop and that we have no longer have we've saved $122,834. So look and see this is what we saved. What would all that cost us? Always want to make that we're not coming out in the red anywhere. Uh
012the director of transportation duties, we recommend a stop 14,000. The assistant clerk duties, we recommend a stop to 12,000. Those extra duties that would be distributed amongst the admin and we looked at an increase of the extra service percentage. If we did a 7% increase in the extra service, it would cost us $33,770. We would still be saving 63,000. Increase of 8% would cost us a little over 58. We would still be saving 58. I may need to go back and double check. That may be a typo on that one. The numbers are exactly the same. 9% cost 53,000. have a savings of around 48. I think my cost is off over here. My savings was good though. I can go back and double check though. Okay. So, going back and looking at the history
013of our extra service percentage, if you go all the way back to 2006, the extra service percentage for the admin was at 22%. In 2015, we dropped down between five and 10%. In 2018, they brought it back up to 10%. That's where it's been since 2018. And just to kind of look to see how percentages are restored. In 2006, our high school principal was the same as our admin positions. In 2015, they got cut back to 14%. In 2019, they got restored to 25%, but the positions over here never got restored. I restored. You're just talking about what they were >> what they were in the past. >> Yeah. >> And one other thing you was talking about Senate Bill two. >> Yes. >> How does that affect what we're doing here? Because that you
014know it's going to do certain law things that we things got legally through the finances stuff. Could you kind effectively any any races after July one have to be equivalent to what a teacher gets. So an administrator after July one can't get a percentage any greater than what a teacher gets. So, um, if if we don't fix this now to kind of get it back in line to where that it was, it'll be literally impossible to catch it. >> Yeah. There there's some mechanisms that are going to be in place to get special permission from KBE, but by all by everything that's been put out, I think it's going be very hard to get any kind of special approval. So it really kind of is if you want your administrators, your superintendent, whoever to be
015kind of at an even keel pay, you need to get it done before July one. Otherwise, wherever you rank percentile wise is probably about where you're going to be going forward. And then two, another thing um in in my cohort and all the different trainings that they send us to um we talked a lot about this and a lot about salaries and and different things. Um when when you have a percentage like we have now like 10% um we have a vacancy over here. If you have a high school principal that would be a good candidate but they're making 25% they're going to take a drastic to come over and potentially lose some good some good applicants. I'm myself and one more person that was over here was down at the 5% in 2016 when
016I came over. I came over with 205 days and 5% a whole lot of work to do for a little bit of a big pay. So what we're looking at is the 10 would be 17 if we took the >> Yes, that makes sense. Thank you. Appreciate the answer. >> Sorry through everything there. >> That's great. >> Some additional salary schedule items that we've been looking at is our classified staff. These positions back in 2015 when all the percentages were cut, their days were cut. So we people that haven't received their 240 day schedule, it makes it hard to get their all their duties and all their assignments completed. If we increase those positions to 240 days, it would cost us a total for all of them, a little over 3,000. Um, we looked at
017our assistant principal pay and due to the Senate Bill 2, looking at bumping them up also. Their extra duty right now is 4%. We were looking at taking them to 8%. Those folks handle all of our discipline in our buildings and they have a lot of after school ball games and stuff that they supervise. Estimated cost for all of those folks in total would be 13,000. Our district health coordinator, she does all of our direct testing for our new hires. We would like to give her five additional days if we could. That way she could come in in the summer and our new employees on board and that cost would be a little over $1,100. Um, taking all that into consideration, that total cost for these items would be 17,000. We go back to even
018the highest percentage of the 17 or the additional seven or I'm sorry, the additional 10 that we looked at back here, we would still be in the good 31,000 or so. still be in the what? >> We would still be in the black. We would be able to still we would still have a savings around 31,000. Um let's see. We have found a need for to add to our salary schedule a principal substitute in case someone's out long term. That way we could hire somebody to come in and cover for a month or so while they were out for anything medical anything. like that subbing during plan period. This is something that a lot of teachers have reached out about. They've asked if they could have pay when they are covering another class when a
019sub can't be found. So like if I was a teacher and I had seventh period planning and they had this class over here that didn't have a sub four and maybe I would go watch a seventh period but somebody else was watching at sixth and so on. just to compensate those folks for their time. Our extra service rate like if anybody does tutoring is $25 an hour. So that's where that number came from. And I did put 60 minutes there. That way if we have some periods that are maybe only 45 minutes, they would get 45 minutes of pay while others might be an hour and 15 minutes. They would get compensated for that. Few little things to throw in there. The principal still must attempt to hire regular sub before requesting teacher coverage. So
020this is kind of like a class ditch effort of getting coverage for their classes. That way we don't cut in into any of the work that any of our our subs that do come to work for us. It wouldn't cut into any of their work. Um the teacher that's taking that has to have coverage must have taken a full or half sick day. That way we just don't have people leaving early and we have people coming in and covering their an hour. That way our soap cost wouldn't skyrocket from that. And then our food service director has asked to move the secretary from a secretary pay to bookkeeping to take care of the duties bookkeeping duties that she does for him and that would come from the food service fund. >> It would not be
021general fund. What if uh what if one of these teachers cover they do it for 60 minutes but they're covering two classes >> two classes period >> what they're still they get $25 an hour to cover a class they're covering two classes >> I would I would probably say have two teachers to Unless they're really small >> team 10 kids in this one additional items for the salary schedule. Our family resource directors came to Karen and I Karen is their admin and asked us to take a look at their salary schedule looking at their salary schedule. When they get year 10, they don't get any step raises from there down. So unless you all vote for a yearly raise, they don't receive anything. So they maxed out at year 10. So, we've looked at um
022the requirements for the job, which is a bachelor's degree. We thought that was more closely related to our rank three teachers, which is a bachelor's degree. I took and I looked at their percent change each year of their step increases for the rank three teacher and mimicked that for the family resource director. So, each year that a rank three teacher would get a raise, family resource, they would get a raise those That's why there's raises some years and not others. Then we looked at the average of the step rates over 27 years. Our rank for teacher I believe was 1.24% and family resource we got into 1.2%. Step changed averaged over 27 years. And then coming to our last one is our SRO salary schedule. We've been blessed to have received some um some additional
023funding from the state to help reimburse us for part of the SRO salaries. Um we're a little behind the times. I guess they're a little behind on pay with some of our surrounding counties and our SRO's do a good job. So we wanted to look at adjusting the salary schedule for them. But this funding could come from grant funds. But here's the difference between the current salary schedule and the new salary schedule for those folks. >> Those those positions are hard to fill. We've had several that's they would come on and then they would be here for a couple years and then they would leave go to other departments and there been a few years where we've had a vacancy and church contracted it out to us and we didn't a really high rate because
024of overtime. We've actually got a six position vacant right now that we're looking. We're excited. We got Joey. We snag Joey. He's he's really good. We're excited to have him in the middle school. And we we get 20,000 per >> last year we received funding for so having that six position for next year I did request funding for six changes You can go back and look at any of it. You want to I can elaborate. >> Tiffany, you're you're the one that's comfortable with like you're saying at the end of the day we're actually >> we're not addition >> money as far as >> we have all our duties. I'm sorry, but we're not going negative. We're not spending any additional money. >> Thank you. >> For any of these changes >> for sure. I
025kind of look at it too is, you know, just kind of getting things back to where that it was prior to prior to 16. If you look back historically for that far as far as Ty went even farther, they were at 22% and actually They had I was thinking about it yesterday. They actually had one more admin over here than we have at the time. >> So are we looking to do the raise now percentage or we just talking about this right now? >> We we can discuss or take action on whatever you guys want to do. What is our deadline on this? >> I had to submit a tenative budget by the 30th and that is not our final budget. >> There's always changes that >> when's the I'm trying to remember the final
026is >> September 30th. >> So we have to have >> but I have to I have to submit this week. >> Got >> on the administrator side. We have to get it submitted by June. >> Gotcha. I remember that question. In Senate Bill 2, if we don't do >> Yeah. If we don't do it by June, then we'd have to go get ahead. Yeah. So, we're what what part of June 1st? >> Uh I think it's June 30th, but I don't think you want to wait deadline to make that decision. >> So, if y'all didn't do it tonight, we have that special board meeting on Tuesday, June 2, >> right? >> We could we could do it then and then like you're adding and stuff, you can make it retroactive June 1st. I personally am
027comfortable with her explanation of it and and I know it's something that superintendent we want to make sure that we this is something probably you're wanting as far as meeting by wanting I shouldn't say what you're needing >> to do your job more effectively. main I think mainly what we're looking at with the positions and I'm talking too much y'all let me know but mainly I think we're looking at just percentages on raises if we all if we agree on the realigning of duties to different groups and those are >> really my question was if we we wanted to vote on this tonight we would have to choose the percentage for the teachers and what the percentage rate would be for the else. We just need to discuss percentages. >> I agree with Braxton. She
028she crunches the numbers and she's she's never let us down. >> I appreciate that. lived in this old weekend. >> She does. She She puts in ample time. >> This is for all staff. Correct. >> This is for all. Yes. >> And the three% is not going to hurt our contingency. Correct. >> If we're looking at those three, that's >> I feel very confident that we we raise below that. I went back and looked at account by account this weekend and spreadsheets on spreadsheets just to make sure that I could tell you guys that whether I was comfortable or not. I'm comfortable. >> What's the percentage we're looking at for the administrators? >> What's our options? So an option of an additional 7% on the extra service which will take it to 17% if you
029wanted to go lower than that or up to 10% which would be that% lower than it was in 2006 >> but was with those numbers from positionwise. We're still saving. >> We're still saving. Even taking this I know these numbers duplicated. This over here is correct. I looked at it a million times. Um even taking this into consideration wanted to take that off. We would still be saving 40 or 30 around $31,000 even with all of those initiatives. We just >> add the >> I just saw there Tiffany, would you go back to one about the assistant principal? It says four to eight. We'd still have to make a decision on that. >> Correct. So that would be added in this which way we want to go with that one. >> Yeah. >> And have
030you figured is that what the cost is for the 4% >> to take them up to an 8%. >> Oh, 428. Okay. So it's adding 4% on their extra duties, >> correct? >> And that would be a $13,000 Now understand >> No, you didn't. You didn't. It's written right there. >> Yeah. Actually, it's already >> for everything that an assistant does, especially, >> you know, working all extracurricular ball games and things like that. Four% is not >> I see now I was thinking we have to decide between the two, but actually it's eight for those extra duties. So basically if we need to make a motion we need to fix% for all employees and then percent increase for the >> so seven eight or 10 8 n 10% right You want to go through one
031at a time. We probably good idea that way. I'm I'm very comfortable with fact what she's told% my biggest% I feel like about everybody's on board 3% on that one >> I'm happy to give them all we can give them because they deserve Do you want do we need to do these individually on motions or we need to >> it would be cleaner? >> I mean just for posterity state keeping everything organized >> to do it well do separate motions. Yeah. >> I'll make a motion we give a general well a salary of 3% to all staff members. Yes, I >> motion second >> chair. >> That's certified a classified. This is an additional seven for an additional eight and so on. >> Would you say the 10 will get it back up to where
032it was at? It would get us close. Igot what year >> 2006 it was at 22%. >> 22% >> so our principles would still get the 25. >> So they don't count. >> No. And I was just And I hated to even put that one on there, but it was something I had to show a comparison of where it came back up and exceeded what they were before. Our high school principal does an awesome job and all that, but this was the only comparison I had. >> If we had an opening, it'd be hard for me to steal her to come over here at 10%. And I've been for 15% reduction. >> So one page back. Do we need to do the stops individually or or just budget on all that stuff? >> Yeah, you
033can approve that conjunction if you want or you can break it down. It's really whatever Tiffany and Melanie think for them to keep track of. >> You just need to make sure address the different >> that is at the whole correct thing. It's not we're not changing percentages there. We're just pretty much this is what we're saying they want to get >> for that. >> So if we just done a big motion for all these stops and stuff. If we just done one big motion for the stop say budget for 2026 27 that would cover everything except for the discuss that work for you. >> Yep. So one question correct >> after the date again June 30th this will not be able to be done correct >> not without special permission >> not without permission
034They've not even told us what that process is going to look at like so percent change What was it? >> What made it go by? >> 2016 at the time we had to reduce >> million times. >> I came over in I came over in 16 when I came over. They don't even know anybody. I'm going everybody else is that much closer to% Everybody 10% on the district administration salary. I'll second >> Drew Cody whole thing. Make a motion we adopt the uh budget for 2026 27. Hi, Drew. >> Hi, Cody. >> Hi, Chair. >> Anything else? Tiffany Tiffany does Tiffany works all the time. If I call her on a Saturday at 8:00 at night, she got a computer sitting in her lap doing something. I don't know where she gets that from. She
035She works hard though. I mean, I'm not just saying that, but she really does. discuss or take action on the BG1 athlete. I'm sorry. Discuss or take action on the district mission statement. Sorry about that. Okay. So, um you know, we've been looking I've been looking at the district mission statement as part of my my onboarding and it's been it's been several years since the district mission statement's been looked at and revised. And I'll just read it to you and then We have a little bit of discussion and we can we can I can bring some things back to you to look at. says, "The greater vision of the McCory County School Leadership Team is to faithfully serve each other, our students, staff, and the families of our community with respect, honesty, and integrity in
036order to carry out our district's mission of making a positive impact in the lives of all citizens of County School District." Um, if I had to say that verbatim from memory, I'd have a hard time doing that. So, if it's okay with you all, I would like to look at having something that's kind of concise, you know, a little a little smaller and something that if somebody ask Karen what's the mission statement from the Great School District, she can just rattle it off. Just something something quick. So, so with your all's permission, I'd like to to look at that over the next couple weeks. And by the end of June at our June board meeting, I adopt the new mission statement with your input. >> What kind of motion do you need? >> You really
037don't have to have any motion on that one. I just wanted to share that with you and kind of discuss it, see if there's any anything u in particular that you all would like to see in the mission statement. And if you you all look at it. Um, I'll I'll shoot it to you all in email and you all can look at it and kind of think about it and if you have some ideas, some input, email me back and then I'll put something together and send it back to you and we can look at it. >> I mean, I couldn't discuss or take action on BG1 athletic facility project. Okay. So, basically this BG1 is uh just wrapping everything up with um the bid that came back for the helical peers and just tying
038tying all that stuff up. Uh just need your approval on that. We opened bids and they came back and you can see them here. They were in items under consent. um with within budget and will allow us not to have to spend any money on general funds to do that. So we just need an approval on this BG1 facility project. >> That was the turf the fieldhouse renovation and grand at the architect's office. We collaborated back and forth to clean that BG1 up to make sure we would be still be within budget accepting that bid of 70,000 to get that work done. And that's the last component of that project. >> Is there going to be any extra at all? Motion we accept the BG1 on the athletic facility project. >> Second >> I Drew
039>> I chair >> the next meeting and a journ next meeting board of education will be special call meeting on Tuesday June 2nd 26 at 7 p.m. And the next regular meeting will be on Tuesday June 23rd 2026 at 5:30 p.m. at board central office. Thank you all.