001McDonald. [snorts] That guy Okay, I would like to welcome everybody to tonight's meeting on a very hot July night. So, thank you for joining us. And at this time, I would like to ask you to join us in a moment of silence, please. Amen. Thank you. And at this time, if you will stand and join with me in the pledge of allegiance. Attention. Salute. Pledge. I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. >> At this time, I would like to get approval of our July [clears throat] 14th, 2020 25 uh meeting agenda. So move. All right, that will stand approved. All right, I believe we have one person signed up for public comment.
002Miss Tara Berdett, do I need to move this up? Okay. My name is uh Tara Bernett and I've been an educator in South Carolina for 26 years with the past 16 proudly serving the students and families of the school district of Okone County. I'm here today to express some deep concern and discouragement over the recent release of the 2025 South Carolina teacher working condition survey which despite its statewide scope did not include a single voice from our district. More than 24,900 teachers across 75% of South Carolina school districts participated in this critical survey commissioned by our state lawmakers through Act 185 to better understand the realities educators face. Its purpose was clear to listen to teachers and elevate our voices. The report was released last month and yet Okone County teachers were left out. I've
003displayed the map up there that shows the the data that was not [clears throat] given to us. Other districts actively encouraged participation and some teachers received direct communication explaining the survey's value and importance. But here in our district, there was no outreach, no information shared, and no opportunity to participate. The absence of our voices undermines the very intent of the survey and sends a disheartening message to those of us working tirelessly to serve our students. We were not invited, not informed, and not given a choice. While other districts advocated for teacher involvement, ours remained silent. The silence wasn't an oversight. It was the result of a decision made by someone in leadership. And that decision matters. It sends a message. When a district excludes its teachers from a process designed to center [cough] their [clears
004throat] voices, it communicates that our experiences and our insights are not valued. It tells us we're good enough to do the work, but not worthy of speaking about how that work affects us. That is not just disappointing, it's demoralizing. The data collected through this survey will likely guide policy decisions, shape school improvement efforts, and inform leadership training across the state. Yet, the voices of Aone County teachers who face the same challenges and dedicate themselves just as fully as our peers elsewhere were not part of that conversation. The final report is powerful. It's insightful, full of meaningful data and educator perspectives. I hope it's being shared with school leaders and used for professional development as it should be right here in Okon County. But in our district, I worry it will be ignored simply because we
005weren't part of it. That omission not only reduces the states for statewide accuracy, but it also damages morale and erodess trust within our own community. As a veteran teacher who has devoted my entire career to this work, I am asking a few things. One, why was Okoney County not included in the South Carolina teaching working condition survey? Two, was this a deliberate decision and if so, by whom? And three, what steps will be taken to ensure our teachers are never excluded from future efforts to gather in educator [clears throat] input? If we truly value teachers, we must also value listening to them. A teacher's voice is not optional. It is essential. We cannot improve our schools without it. How can we claim to support educators yet fail to include them in a statewide initiative specifically
006designed to understand and improve their working conditions? How can meaningful progress be made when our district chooses not to listen? It is hard to feel valued when we were denied opportunities to share our experiences. Our voices matter, not only to us as professionals, but to the students and the families and the communities we serve. I hope this letter is not received as criticism, but as a call for transparency, accountability, and change. We can and must do better. Okone County teachers deserve to be heard. Thank you. >> Thank you, Miss Tara. And as we have uh heard about this, we've certainly started to ask the same questions. So, we will be purposeful to make sure that teachers are not left out in the future. For sure. >> So, is there any other public comment at this
007time? >> No, ma'am. >> Okay. Can Can I make a comment? >> Sure. >> Yeah. >> I want you to know that I'm speaking for myself only, but I we do appreciate the teachers. We will support you. We will stand behind you. And we do definitely appreciate you and we'll continue to do so. And I hope that you will come up and give us your views also and not be afraid to voice those views. That's our hope. Thank you. And also as a former teacher um I share that sentiment as well. Teachers voices as well as all employees voices are always important to be heard. >> Okay. At this time I would like to uh move to our approval of minutes. We've got several minutes here to to go through. So do I have a
008motion to approve the June 2nd, 2025 board retreat minutes if everybody had a time to review those? So second. >> All right. A motion, a second. Any discussion? All in favor? All right. Now for the June 2nd, 2025 board meeting minutes. >> Motion to approve. >> All right. Motion to second. Any discussion? All in favor? All right. Thank you. And now to our June 20th special call meeting minutes. >> Motion to approve. Second. >> All right. Motion and second. Any discussion? All in favor. And now finally, our June 30th special meeting. >> Second. >> All right. Motion a second. Any discussion? No. All right. All in favor? Thank you. >> All right. Now to our discussion items. Mr. Shikling, our June financial report. >> So u this is the you'll see draft labeled on this
009one as uh we have not undergone the audit for the final results from uh 2425. So June 30th is really we say the day that lasts three months. Um the numbers will be a little bit different already since the day the report was prepared, but I'm going to kind of take you through where we stand right now. Um so today uh about three hours ago we received our u final June collection um from the county for taxes. So the numbers uh for local revenue uh I I can update that number now to roughly 55,400,000 um for the total um which is a variance of about 250,000 rather than 1.1 million. Um [clears throat] not much else has changed on there except for motor carrier fees. motor carrier fees for the for the year to date
010is going to be roughly 1.1 million. Um so a little bit better news on the local tax revenue side, although still short of our uh adopted budget for that local collection value. Um not much change from the the report um on the non-local um state sources. You know, we've talked throughout the budget uh course of the budget preparation about the need to budget a little bit less than what the state projects for some of these um state funded uh aid to classroom items. Um and so that now represents our final 135th day allocation, which is a $6,000 variance from what we budgeted. So, um, I'll call part of that blind luck, but that strategy of budgeting a little bit less than what's projected. Um, it looks like it's been a prudent strategy for us, at
011least in this year. Um, at the end of the year here, um, we also booked the indirect costs from the the cafeteria fund. we can take a component of the revenues from the cafeteria fund to represent our custodial costs, the cost of utilities, things like that, overhead, and um reimburse the general fund for that. So, you're seeing our eligible percentage of indirect cost applied there. Um so all in all total revenue um for the year is roughly three million to the good um which is I think probably the best news we could have hoped for um given what we anticipated would be roughly a break even budget. Um on the expenditure side I do want to point out a couple of things to you. If you look at the primary programs and elementary programs, you'll
012see some of that um personnel consolidation or cost shifting that went through throughout the year um where we talked about really taking people that were broken up into chunks in different areas and moving them all to one code. So you'll see that the negative variance in primary programs is is almost exactly made up for in the positive variance in the elementary programs. Um, aside from that, not not very descript, nothing of note throughout the special education areas. Um, when you get to um, student support services, which is the top line on the next page, uh, we did make the decision to, uh, our Medicaid fund has a social worker in there, and because our budget could contain it and we were performing well, we moved that social worker salary and benefits into the general fund
013out of the Medicaid fund. So you will see a negative variance in student support services for that reason. Um you'll see a little bit of variance in um general administration. Um that is some of those monitor positions that at the beginning of the year we had moved into administration and after further consultation um we believe that we'll be able to classify them as instruction because they support teachers and lead to their unencumbered time. But um so that'll be a uh temporary variance that'll be corrected in the next budget cycle. Um and then for central operations, you see purchase services, that's generally going to be building building repair, um building contractuals for the operations department. Um and last but not least in the central support services um that variance in supplies and materials is represented by
014the purchase of staff computers for next year trying to get ahead of that purchasing schedule and not using capital. So all in all um if you look at the the total um culmination of the year's operations on this report um we're over budget by about 80,000 on 133 million. So you know very small fraction of a percent. Um that number has increased as we've finished our July 15th payroll and acrewed it back to last year um for work that was completed um in the end of June. Um we've also had some utility bills come in and made some benefits out. So we'll continue to see some expenses accumulate there. My hope would be u that in August I can bring to the board a recommendation um to potentially move some of our um excess uh
015revenues from this year into either uh either or a combination of a reserve for technology purchasing [clears throat] um or the pupil activity bus fund. So a couple of things that we have utilized excess for in the past. Um just want to make sure I've got a decent handle on what that number should be. Um, also, and although it's not on the finance report, um, I'd like I'd like to let you know you can anticipate a bond resolution um for August's meeting, that will um keep us on our annual issuing schedule um for bonds in the fall. So, we would need to bring that in August to be able to issue debt uh either in the September or October time frame. For um check dispersements, there's not a ton of noteworthy activity. Again, it's primarily
016capital and food service driven. Um, and that's about all that I've got for you. I'm happy to answer any questions. >> I have one and I apologize for not calling you earlier. Back in revenues, please. >> Yep. >> Of local non- tax, what are refunds? I mean, what falls into that category? I just noticed there was kind of a, you know, we didn't budget a lot, but we got more in obviously than we anticipate. >> Sure. Um, so that's going to those are the technical uh state code for that is refunds of prior year's expenses. >> Okay. >> Um, there's an there's a fairly broad category that can fall into there. Um, anytime that we receive something back if it's an unclaimed check, um, there are some things that are small revenues that have to
017do with property sharing agreements we've got. I can think maybe one of them is $10,000 or so um for some forestry property um or property that's used for forestry and we get a share of that. Um so any given year it's really difficult to project um but I if you'd like to see more detail I >> no no I just wondered generally what was in that category. Um so that's that's great. Thank you so much. >> I have one question and you may have told us this. Um what are we what is our this year? What is our plan for feeding students? Are we doing this exact same thing or is that cut back or >> for the um >> the breakfast and and >> the C program? C program will be full K12. >>
018Okay. Thank you. >> Any other questions? All right. Thank you for that. And now for discussion and possible action. Mr. Smith, if you'll tell us about the property matter concerning Ebenezer Community Club. >> Yes, ma'am. Uh good evening. Uh this this item references a property that currently uh houses the Ebenezer Community Club over on 1106 Ebenezer Road in West Union. Uh this property was actually owned by the school district of Aone County up until 1968. To be clear, that's 57 years ago. uh when it was sold and transferred to the Ebenether Community Club. Uh but SDOC has actually retained a right of first refusal in that deed. Uh there's a current request for Mr. Cry, who's the director of emergency services, to lease that facility for the purpose of a fire station, which would require
019an amendment to the current lease agreement. So, this would be no cost to the district. Again, we haven't owned that property since 1968. So, present to the board for consideration. um you would need to uh approve a quick claim deed with the county that would allow the release of the school district of Aone County uh our right of first refusal to let that project move forward so it could house possibly house a a fire department >> or a fire station. >> Does anybody have any questions? Do we need to think on this another bit or are we okay to go ahead and make make decision on this? Okay. >> Okay. >> Sure. >> Okay. I move that we grant the authority to the acting superintendent or his designate to work with Scott Crane in the
020Ebenea Community Club to edit the current lease agreement to allow for the release of our current right of first refusal, which would then allow for the community club to partner with Okone County to plan for the addition of a fire station on this site. >> Second. All right. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? All right. All in favor. Great. >> Happy to be a community partner to our to our community in that. >> Sure. >> All right. Moving on to our action items. Board meeting calendar 2026. >> Yeah. You'll see before you uh a document that should be uh relatively familiar. We came forward last month with a proposed calendar. There was one conflict uh that was communicated and that's that June date. It was originally scheduled for June 8th. Uh it now has
021been moved to June uh 15th and so just uh presenting to you uh bringing the amended version forward for your review and approval. >> I think we've seen this a couple times. So we're can we go ahead and take action on this? Is that was that date good? >> Okay. I make a motion that we approve the board meeting calendar for January 2026 to December 2026 as presented. >> Second motion is second. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? All right. And then finally, our FY26 board goals. >> Yes, ma'am. As you know, uh each year the board updates these board goals to highlight uh current areas of focus for uh for the board, really the entire district for the coming year. Uh the document that you see here before you represents some updates to
022last year's uh document. It's been updated also uh hopefully to represent the recommendations and the conversation that took place in our board retreat uh this past month on June 2nd as well. Well, and so just bringing this document forward uh to you for your discussion and possible adoption this evening. >> All right. Any questions on this? I know we worked a long time in the in the board retreat to really focus on student outcomes and our our teachers and our community aspect. And I believe this document is about as close as we can we can hit the nail on the head for it. So with that, I'll take a motion to approve the board goals. >> I make a motion we approve the 2526 board goals per the document we have received. >> All right.
023Motion a second. Any further discussion? All in favor? Now we will open it up for board member comments. At this time, I just wanted to say we do appreciate our teachers so much and um you know, and as Dr. Kederman said, we will certainly research where this came into play or how it came into play and make sure it doesn't happen again because we do appreciate it and we appreciate y'all taking your time out of the summer to come. Really do. um in anytime just please contact us, come visit our schoolboard meetings because you are the important part of our school. >> You are our most valuable resource. You do know that >> happy teachers make happy students. >> Yep. >> They make well behaved students. Uh and so I think there's enough of us
024up here with it with experience to know that and we are listening and we do care. Um, I was aware of the survey and to be honest with you, I had the exact same questions that you had because I knew u several months ago that we did not participate, but I didn't ask the question. Uh, and maybe I should have. Uh, but what I was doing was eyes on the future in hopes to find out why and so we that it wouldn't happen again. Uh I do know teacher retention is big on on u Ellen Weaver's plate our state superintendent and so those things need to echo through us as well. So we are listening we are paying attention and thank you for coming >> also as we have administrators and just visitors [clears throat]
025tonight and we do appreciate our board meetings are open and we do appreciate it when you come and again thank y'all taking time from your summer to be here with us. Absolutely. >> Anybody else? Well, thank you to everybody who came and again for taking a night out of your summer break. So, we're excited for a new school year. All right. At this time, I will take a motion to go into executive session. >> Second. All right. All in favor? >> Thank you.