001will be opening the meeting with a brief moment of silence or prayer and the pledge of allegiance to the United States flag. No one is required to participate or be present for any of these and being in this portion of the meeting is completely voluntary this evening. I do believe Miss Rosales has some special guests. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Uh today we're going to have the pledge and it's going to be led by a couple students from Brown's Chapel. I would like for them to come over here and stand by the podium. Their names are Ellie Rosales, Fis Amin, and Aalam Am. Will you stand with us as we lead the p the pledge? I pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands.
002One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Will you bow your heads with me as we pray? Dear Lord, thank you for this beautiful day that you've given us. Lord, as we gather here together, I pray God that you give each one of us here a clear mind, but most importantly, wisdom and discernment as we're about to make some major decisions that are impacting so many families. I also pray, Lord, a special prayer request for the Sullivan family as they continue to grieve the loss of their child. I pray that God that you give them comfort, but most of all, give them peace beyond understanding. I also pray Lord for the students, the seniors that are about to graduate from high school. Lord, I just pray as they walk down the aisle
003and grab the and they're about to get their diplomas. I pray that as they walk out the out the door, I I pray over them. Jere Jeremiah 2:9:11, for it says that you have the plans for them. They're good plans and not to curse them, but to bring them blessings, Lord. So, I pray that over them, and then in your son's name, I pray all these things. Amen. Amen. We have the agenda before us. Do we have any comments or questions regarding the agenda? Yes. Oh no, that has been moved. So sorry. We are going to have a special presentation, but it's going to be at Rutherford Proud. So, um, everyone's got the agenda in front of them. Any questions or comments regarding the agenda? If not, we don't vote today. Is a work session
004practicing. Got you. You'll be ready. Uh, next we have the consent agenda. Let me take a Yes. Sullivan has some We'll have two additional at least nepotism approvals. One is for an employee at John Coleman. Um, Jennifer Nolan. She's an EA. Her sister works at the school as a teacher. And then um a Kimberly Whitehead for a cafeteria manager position at McFadden. And her turn sister is a cafeteria member at campus school, which serves as a satellite because we don't actually cook food um at campus school. So we'll assign someone else as that direct supervisor. But I'll add those both to the agenda um for Thursday and those came in today. So that's why it's not there. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from anyone? Yeah, I've got I've got one on the uh
005I just got clarification on the fees. Uh again, we've talked about this before. who uh who dictates the cost of those fees and who uh some of them approved for no fees and it um who determines that just the principles of the schools. Mr. Siovon. So, uh, some of the groups that we don't charge fees are community members that either do an inkind agreement with the school, um, or have had longstanding community relationships with the schools. And so, um, sometimes those will be listed as no fees. I just wondered, it seems like there's some that are charged some schools and other schools there aren't. You know, it just I don't know. I just wonder for my own sake where that you know like uh when they use the facilities you know it um you know
006just seems like that uh if they use the the school itself. It seems like there should be a fee charge use the restrooms and all that type thing. Anything else? Okay, next we come to Rutherford Proud. Okay, Miss Marshall is going to lead this first part and Dr. Pilgrim. Everybody hear me say doctor. She graduated. Congratulations, Tyra. Thank you very much. Well, tonight we I have the awesome honor to introduce you to some incredible organizations transforming the lives of students across the country. Career and technical student organizations. We have Skills USA, DECA, FFA, FCCLA, TSA, and HOSA. And though each of these focuses on different career pathways, they all share a mission. Empowering students through leadership, competition, and life-changing opportunities. So, let's go ahead and begin with Skills USA. It's an organization for students in
007trade, technical, and service careers from welding, and carpentry to culinary arts, and robotics. Members compete in skills-based events, earn certifications, and even line up jobs before graduation. So I would like first to introduce Leverne High School information technology skills USA. Good evening. Uh my name is Joshua Love. I am a senior at Leverne High School and I am the current state champion for telecommunications cabling. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Hannah. I am uh a junior at Leverne High School. Uh I I am state champion for information technology services. Uh that's [Applause] it. Uh I'm Jia Elliot. I'm a junior at Leverne High School and I was elected to serve as Skills USA state secretary for the 2025 to 2026 academic school year. Thank you. Now I would like to introduce the Leverne High
008School audiovisisual production skills USA. Good afternoon. My name is Ronald Miguel. Um I competed for audio production in Skills USA and we went third place. It was a very fun moment. It was my first time competing and my last time is I will graduate this year. [Applause] Um hello, my name is Miris Woodson. I also competed in um audio production and got third place. It was really fun. Thank you. Next we'll see um here from Rockville Skills USA. [Music] Hi, my name is Kate Revette. I am a senior at Rockville High School and we competed in entrepreneurship at Skills USA and got third place. My name is Zoe Helcher. I'm also a senior at Rockville High School and I competed in entrepreneurship as well and got third. I am Sophia Warmarmac. I am a senior
009and I participated in entrepreneurship and got third place. Thank you. Now we would like to hear from Oakland High School Skills USA Meatronics. Hello everyone. My name is Vance Hutchings. While we're wheeling in our competition, I want to talk about a guy that couldn't make it here tonight. His name is Samuel Dalling. He is a member of our associates program at Oakland High School. um and he competed in electronics technology which is basically wiring up circuits and soldering and that kind of thing. He's actually graduating from MLO tonight. So they're having their graduation so he couldn't join us but he took first in state so just a little shout out to him. Hey, my name is Sophie Frisbee. I'm a junior at Oakland High School and my partner and I competed in commercial SUAS drones
010in Skills USA and we got first. My part of the competition was to give verbal commands to Bennett while he was blindly navigating with a drone through an obstacle course. Uh I'm Bennett Payne. I was the uh remote pilot in command for the uh competition and we my part was basically just to stand facing away from the um arena and pilot the drone listening to our commands and complete a series of tasks and then also to plan a flight plan from uh Colorado Springs to Denver International. [Applause] Hello, I'm back again. Uh, fant as you heard. So, this is our arcade machine and it's fully operational so you can play all the classic games on it. Um, so it started as a concept we came up with in January. Uh, we just wanted to do
011something that would be fun, but we still had to do an innovation for it. And so we had the structural design on this um where basically we had to use our CAD software and we catted up the entire thing from the ground up in like a 3D printing software and then from that we made it out of wood. So from concept to structure we were able to build the entire thing. So now I'm going to hand it over to Nick Bradford and he's going to talk about the programming and the pneumatics on the inside. So for the programming we used a Raspberry Pi and then downloaded all the ROMs. So all the separate games uh from the internet onto the Raspberry Pi, therefore being able to access all the games. And then for the pneumatics,
012we have a pneumatics locking mechanism. Uh it is safer than an electronics me locking mechanism because if it comes unplugged or anything like that, instead of having a shock to a little kid or somebody that's trying to surface it, it will just have a splash of air in your face, preventing any serious injuries. And then Clark Edge did all of our cosmetic and aesthetic designs. I'm Clark and uh whenever we first started this idea, we had to think of the most iconic uh video game characters. So on top, you can't see it, but we have the Galas Galaga spaceship. And on this side, we have Shredder from the Ninja Turtles. On the other side, we have Vance is going to turn it around. We have Rayu from Street Fighter. Um, and back on the front
013we have Donkey Kong along with the uh the manual for all of our buttons. And uh we just have different 3D printed game references like that pizza slice, the Ninja Turtles, uh sewer grate or manhole cover. That's what I meant. Sorry. Um and we had a lot of fun doing this. This was four months of our time and we're doing it over again. That's awesome. We're going to national. Good. Do y'all have any programs that for board members to on the board? Y'all got a program in there to help us make decisions? They could probably write something. I don't know. All right. Next, we're going to move on to DECA. DECA focuses on business, marketing, finance, and entrepreneurship. And the DECA members pitch business plans, business leadership skills, and travel to state and international conferences.
014And it's not uncommon for them to get um scholarships, internships, and even small businesses under their belt. So, first up, we are going to uh hear from Eagleville DECA. Hi, my name is Kate Wilson. I'm with Eagleville Deca. So, we just returned from uh ICDC, which is held in Orlando, Florida, and I had the opportunity to compete with Mallerie in travel tourism team decision-m. Hi, I'm Mallerie and we competed at the state and international level and placed at state. Hello, my name is Koko Von I'm a freshman at Eagleville and I competed in retail merchandising and I competed at SCDC and qualified for ICDC. [Applause] Hi, my name is Lawson Lada and I competed in principles of entrepreneurship and qualified in state and made it to the international level at ICDC. I'm a freshman Eagle
015Next we have Oakland DECA. Hi, my name is Addison Enley. I am a senior at Oakland High School and also the co-president of Oakland High School's DECA. Um, my partner Aris Koulan and I competed in the integrated marketing campaign event where we had to make an event and then market it. We got second place and qualified for nationals. [Applause] Hello, I'm Sophie James. I'm a senior at Oakland High School. I'm also the other co-president of the OHS DECA chapter. I've competed in DECA for three years under the automotive services marketing service campaign and I've qualified for internationals for two years in a row now. Next, we will hear from Rock Deca. Hi everybody. My name is Paxton Holder and I'm a junior at Rockville High School. Me and my partner DJ competed in the schoolbased
016enterprise food operations research event. Uh and we play seventh place overall. Good evening. I'm DJ McCulla. I'm a senior at Rockville High School. Yes, like Paxton said, we did school-based enterprise food operations which was a part of DECA's many different events we could have chose from. And that event actually took us straight to ICDC. So we skipped state and we placed seventh place in ICDC. And here's one of our medals. And Paxton's wearing another one. So all right. Next we're going to hear from our friends from FFA. It is now a leadership powerhouse for careers in agriculture, animal science, and environmental systems. members travel to conventions and competitions nationwide, building skills in public speaking, sustainability, teamwork, and far beyond the farm. So, let's hear from Oakland FFA. Good afternoon. I'm Gina Stewart, one of five
017adviserss at Oakland High School. Um, tonight we just want to really say thank you to all of you for for supporting us and being a part of what we do. Uh we have great administrators and this is a great county to work in because you support career and technical education. So we really appreciate that. All of our students who are state winners couldn't be here tonight. So we're going to talk about just a few of them who couldn't be here. Um I have the opportunity to talk about Lucas Carlton. He's a state winner in his FFA proficiency that's in diversified agriculture. He work he works on his family's cattle farm. He also works at Tennessee farmers cooperative. Um and he has a forage operation. So he also bales and cuts hay all across the county.
018So, he's a state winner and he will be representing us at nationals. Uh, he's already graduated, so we're excited to see how that goes. So, he's one of the state winners for Oakland tonight. I'm James Scott and I can't reiterate what Gina said enough. Um, we thank you guys so much. I'm one of the other adviserss at Oakland High School and I have the privilege to talk about Emma G. Um, she was our state winner in Agra Science Social Systems Division 3. um she could not be here tonight. She did a study on uh looking at cultivated meat products and the perceptions on legislation surrounding those products. Um she won state last year and did a uh extension of that product. This year um still looking at the same thing. So she will compete in
019October at national convention. Um and we wish her the best. I'm Bridget Vaughn. I'm also one of the agriculture teachers at Oakland High School. We really appreciate you having us and our students here tonight um to get them recognized and we do appreciate all that you do. Um we had a student that's unfortunately not able to be here tonight, Madison Rich. She completed a aggra science fair project in plant systems division 3 and was named the state winner and she will go on to compete at national convention. Um she tested industry standard products for floral design, removing thorns and leaves from roses for arrangements um to find the best industry tool. Thank you. Hi, I'm Samuel Johnson and I am a sophomore at Oakland and I competed in food science with my colleagues right here.
020Yes, I'm Kennedy Lewis and I'm also a sophomore at Oakland. I'm Sarah Buchet and I'm a junior at Oakland. Hello, my name is Sophie Marcos. Um I we proudly won State for Food Science um career development event. That's a competition where we do the triangle test, the aromomas, and a knowledge test. And then once we get top 10, we all compete in a team presentation where we um design and show off our on the-go dessert snack cake. And we will be representing NA um at nationals in October. Thank you. Hi, my name is Mary Redmond. And I'm Kennedy Lewis. and we had an opportunity to compete in the aggra science competition this year at state. We made a 72page research paper about the Tennessian's perception of farm land loss and we are proudly going to
021be representing Rutherford County at nationals this year. Hello, I am Annth Cruz. I was in agrocience research fair where I was in environmental and natural resources division 5. Um that state where I was a state winner. I evaluated constructed wetlands effectiveness in improving water quality um looking at different marsh vegetation to see if they could take nutrients out looking at the problem of utrification. So thank you. Hello, I am Sarah Wheaten and I am a junior at Oakland High School. I was able to compete in the aggra science fair research project in division 5 of plant systems and I was able to take home the state winner. Um, I will also be able to compete in national convention in October and I'm really excited. My project was over the effectiveness of different f of different
022floral preservatives on the bacterial growth, moisture retention, and longevity of cut flowers. Thank you. Hello, I'm Lydia Moore. I'm from the Oak. I'm a freshman at the Oakland FA chapter and I had the opportunity to compete in the Aggra Science Fair, food processing and systems division 3 and uh one state championship will be representing at nationals. Good afternoon everyone. I'm Chris Gan. I'm a member of the Oakland FFA chapter and I competed in the sheet production proficiency. I was the uh state winner and as you can imagine I did everything she production related from feeding to land management to uh vaccines and I guess the beautiful part about my proficiency is I didn't do um sheet production for my proficiency. I did the proficiency for sheet production. I just do what I love and I
023just kind of put it on paper and recorded it and I'm going to go on to compete at nationals. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Annabelle Alexis and I am a junior at Oakland High School and I had the opportunity to compete in the prepared public speaking leadership development event. I was tasked to write a 6 to8 minute speech about farmland loss and a legislation that goes with it. The legislation recently passed so that's pretty exciting and I am having the opportunity to compete in October for our national convention. I'm so excited to represent Tennessee and Redford County in the fall. Thank you all so much. Good evening. I'm Emma Milikin and I had the honor to represent Oakland FFA, but also Middle Tennessee FFA as a student member on the nominating committee for
024the 2025 2026 state FFA officer team. And I had the opportunity over the course of two days to interview to interview 30 candidates who were vying for those six positions as a state officer. Being able to sit at a table with both our commissioner in agriculture and our commissioner education really made me thankful for that partnership and the encouragement we have from both of those departments. Additionally, Oakland FFA was recognized as the Middle Tennessee points cup winner for the 2024 2025 school year. This award is is given to the chapter who's the most well-rounded in their success. This is based off of the three circle model in agricultural education, supervised agricultural experiences, our classroom, our classroom laboratory experiences, and our participation in FFA. The commitment that our chapter members have not only to excellence inside
025the classroom, but outside the classroom really speaks not only to not only to the dedication of our FFA chapter, but also our adviserss. This is an award that we set our sights for at the beginning of the year and with the help of our officer team and our adviserss, we're really thankful to not only receive this, but also the opportunities we were awarded through it, especially with the support of our of our school of our school administrators in our county. Next, we're going to hear from Eagleville FFA and Stewart's Creek FFA. Good evening. My name is Sarah Marshall and I am a senior at Eagleville High School. And I'm Ariana Moda, a senior at Steuart's Creek High School. And this past March at the Tennessee FFA state convention, we had the opportunity to run alongside
02630 other candidates for a state officer position. Ari was elected the state reporter and I was elected the state sentinel. And over the next year, we're not only going to get to repres represent our school and our county, but we'll represent over the 33,58 members from across Tennessee. And not only was I selected as a state officer, but I also had the opportunity to compete at in the agricultural communications career development event, which our team took first place and will compete at the national level. And I also was able to compete at in the agricultural communications proficiency where I was also named a state champion which includes my podcast working with market research and agricultural companies and making sure that we battle those misconceptions in agriculture. Thank you. All right. Next, we're going to hear
027from our FCCLA friends, which stands for Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America, prepares students for careers in Family Sciences, Education, and Human Services. We will hear first from Blackman FCCLA. Thank you for having us tonight. I'm representing two students who couldn't be here tonight. Um, I'm Leslie Mertz. I teach TAP at Blackman High School and I took five uh students from FCCLA to compete at state. Elijah Wall won first in nutrition and wellness and Balin Low won first in early childhood education. So we will travel to Orlando in July to compete at nationals. Next we will hear from Riverdale FCCLA. Hello, I'm Miss Lden, one of three adviserss, Miss Klein and Miss Wilsford at Riverdale for FCCLA. Um I'm just going to speak about two that members that u made nationals that are not
028able to be with us. Um we have with this group here uh they had a three team um group and um Jasmine Welch is not able to come but she's with them and she'll be going to nationals. And also we have Sabria Thomas who competed in food innovations and she won first place state um gold in um for Tennessee and she'll be going to nationals too. She made a smoothie with um she put goji berries in it. So, we're hopefully going to use that in our new smoothie bar at Riverdale next year. Thank you. Good evening. My name is Mary. I'm a sophomore at Riverdale High School and we participated in chapter service to play project level two in which we won first place going to nationals. Our project is titled Community Embrace and which
029focuses on elderly going through a tough crisis of loneliness and depression due to the lack of family ties. We visited the Rutherford Community Care in which we accomplished our goal of bringing happiness and positive social interactions between youth and adults. Hi, my name is Evie Harland. We did this by having two different visits. The first one was during Thanksgiving, which we made cards and hand turkeys, which allowed them to feel positivity during the holidays. We then went back during Valentine's Day, where we made canvases that they could paint on, which allowed them to feel happy. And then we went to the rooms where senior citizens couldn't come out of so we could let them feel happiness, too. And we wanted them to feel included as well. This impacted the senior citizens because they felt happy
030after we did our project and it lowered the depression rate within that small community. This impacted our members because they realized they should love their grandparents no matter what and they should visit them more often and it gave them a positive impact on the senior citizens. Thank you. [Applause] Good afternoon. My name is John Martinez. I competed in star event career investigation and I investigated the law enforcement pathway and this really helped many ways not just with me but to others as in my friends peers because it made them know that police officers do many many work and we don't appreciate them enough and it shows that no matter matter how many times we get mad at the police or we get mad at anybody that's part of the law enforcement, we really should be
031thanking them. They're helping our community. They're helping everybody. And with this star event, I won first place and I will be going to nationals. And I applied for the NLC uh FC the NLC scholarship and I was really really blessed because I won that scholarship. I was the only person in the state of Tennessee to win it. So, not only am I representing Riverdale, I'm representing the state of Tennessee. And I really really hope that the judges over there like it, you know, and I also want to say thank you to the fellow officers over there because like I said, they don't get appreciated enough. And thank you. We also have TSA and HOSA and they were not able to join us tonight. But what do all of these have in common? They build confidence.
032They give the students opportunities to prepare for real world opportunities and careers. And they open doors to travel, competition, and leadership. And this would not be possible if it weren't for the adviserss that teach our students day in and day out. So if you are a CTE adviser and you're still in the room, if you would please stand. Thank you very much. And thank you. Also, I know they've said it before, but we have a very supportive school system, school board, and we would not be able to do the things that we can do if we did not have that. Our school administrators, they are all in, and it really makes a difference. It's not normal to have state officers. It's not normal to have as many winners as we have. And so, it's a
033testament, true testament to what you all do and the um hard work that the students put in. And so I am I know that these students that we saw tonight are going to become our future leaders. And so I'm so proud of them. Again, I thank you um for your support. And we're done tonight. [Applause] Okay, for our second part of Rutherford Proud tonight, we're once again going to honor four staff members who have been nominated and selected for uh a strong outstanding staff award. These once again are being brought to us by Sonic. I'm going to bring that up every month because we've got Chris Dragons and Alan Shuer over here, managing partners with the Sonic Drive-Ins of Rutherford County, and they've graciously supported this program all year long. This is our last one
034of this school year. Uh but as I've said before, they have already asked could they do it again next year. They said that we want to do it again if you guys are doing it. So very much appreciate that. I I do take one uh note though with some of those students who are just here. They what do you think about them calling some of those games from our past, Dr. Sullivan, as classic games. Did you hear that? It hurt. I mean, Street Fighter holds up. Yeah, that hurt. Let's say that Street Fighter holds up. So, um but okay. So, the first category tonight is for someone in administration, and it's always great when it's somebody who I know personally who's also I know that they're a wonderful employee, but uh Brett Throwberry is an
035AP at Riverdale High School. Come on up, Brett. Uh Dr. Martin, our deputy superintendent, you'll go see her. She's going to have Now, I'm going to say nice words about Brett. Uh I can we make her speak first? What's that? I think she should have to speak. Oh, yeah. She also worked for Dr. Sullivan at one point at Rocky Fork, so it's great. But Brett's a great um administrator, and the person who nominated her said she's an amazing boss and leader, always there with a sweet smile and always willing to work with others. So, thank you, Brett. Uh the next one tonight is a third grade teacher from Rockville Elementary School, Miss Beth Carter. And so, this one's a long one, but I'm going to read it. She's an She's amazing with the kids. She's
036hands-on, always making learning fun and always showing experiments, examples, or having the kids doing something fun uh of whatever they are learning to help them learn. So many kids learn more by showing than telling, and she does both. Therefore, more kids are coming out knowing more knowledge and having fun doing it. So, thank you. The next is Miss Linda Thompson. She's the lead custodian at Leverne Lake. Miss Linda is an incredible lead custodian. She is hardworking, dedicated to her job, and always does whatever she can to support the school. All of our students and staff are always happy to see her because of the kind heart and friendly smile she always carries. I can't think of anyone more deserving of recognition. And then the last one is Miss Danielle Anderson, who's the bus driver for
037bus 284. Is M. Anderson here? So, I think Miss Anderson, is this your first year driving for us? My very first year. Yeah, I heard that she's uh already making an impression. But Miss D takes the time to truly see every one of her middle school bus riders. She is the positive start and end to my daughter's day. So, this came directly from a parent. My daughter literally says Miss D is her favorite human at at Blackman Middle School. uh she she has fun with her students and is a true joy and she puts their safety both with a bus as well as social emotional safety first. So, thank you so [Applause] much. Could we get the board to do a big group picture real quick right over here in the corner? You're good. Yeah.
038I believe we have some more guests from Miss Rosales. Yes. Uh we have a special treat tonight from Stewart's Borro Elementary School. Miss Snder is here. She's the principal. Um we have we're going to be graced by the fifth grade drama performance led by Miss York and Miss Williams. And they're going to be doing uh Moana Jr. [Applause] I'm so sorry. [Music] Yes. Watch and [Music] learn. It doesn't matter how you feel inside. Don't reveal inside. You keep it real inside. So you make a face terriy. You make it scared inside. You're [Music] keep your face for your face. for your face between your eyes and [Music] [Applause] you did good. I kind of thought you'd be dead by death. But I'm super glad you're not cuz I'm dead. What? I'm planning You're going to
039be a distraction while I hold the hook. This crap really likes treasure. Are you sure this is going to work? I've been thinking of getting my hook and being an awesome game for a thousand years. This has got to work. It goes. Wow. Sparkly shiny came to me is covered in sparkly sparkles. You're not selling it. It's so sick. You do that, you're dead. All you have to do is try to talk to Phil and make him talk about himself. That show love to the rap. You two get more green. No, [Music] sens. What have we here? It's a sparkly shiny Wait a minute. Ew. It's a human. What are you doing down here in the realm of monsters? I just had to see for myself because you have a death wish. No, because we
040humans have heard the tale of the crap and I just needed to know how you can so Are you just trying to get me to talk about myself? Because if you are, I'll gladly do so. It's summer. [Music] What's on top of this [Music] glam once? Now I know I can be happy in a glam you baby. Did your granny say to your heart you are on the inside? I work a [Music] heart [Music] shine. I sparkle just a sec. Don't you know it's your dumb glitter? Oh, fun to [Music] bright see. Hey, grab case. It's mapping time. Giant hawk coming up. Giant hawk. I said giant h. My hook doesn't work. What? I can't [Music] transform. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Little Mauy's having trouble with this look. You don't forget the [Music] sweet from the
041[Music] outside. I never see [Applause] shining stuff. Your eyes will definitely [Music] die. Now man, you can try try [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] hard from the wall. You abandon it. You chasing the love made you want. You try to be tough, but your arms just higher to keep your heart [Music] single just for me. You'll never be quite as shined. Wish you were shining. Wait, I got something shiny for you. The heart of the power of creation for a pristation. Come and get it. [Music] Nice. Fist out diversion. Sebastian never had enough of this. [Music] Thank you very much. Yes, the most talented students and that was tremendous. Thank you so very much. That was wonderful. We do not have any public comment tonight. Uh next up we have legal. So first we have a
042transfer student under discipline number one. The board's been requested to admit transfer student from another school system under discipline. A student was remanded for insubordination. Clone to policy 6.318. The board may deny admissions of any student except those in state custody when a student transfers from another school system while under suspension suspension or expulsion. Treasure schools recommendations to admit in place into alternative school in this situation. Okay. Number eight, financial. So starting several here as we look into financial matters. This is a fund 141 fund balance amendment and board. When this was originally posted on Thursday or Friday, I don't remember the date it originally posted. We had several fund balance amendments. Um those are going to pause and wait until the June meeting now after talking with um county finance director Michael Smith for
043something with transportation and trying to get checks out for next year's contract instead. And so we've got to work through a couple things to be able to do that for $4,000 for insurance. You want to go ahead and talk? Well, we we had talked about that last month or six weeks ago, how to formulate it and the only thing I could craft in my mind was to take it out of ending fund balance this year and then replace it after July 1st back in. Is that what he's come up with? No. So, Brian and I are all right moving all kinds of So, we had had we were doing two amendments. A we have revenue that's one-time revenue that we had not budgeted yet. So we don't for our fast growth funding and um direct
044outcome funding that we use as an endyear cleanup amendment. We were doing non salaried first and that's what we and Brian correct me if I'm wrong cuz all the numbers are starting to run together with two budget years. I know they are for you too. That was what was on your originally posted on Thursday. Michael would much rather say, he said, just do one budget amendment. It's easier for us. That's what I do on the county end. Just do one budget amendment. And that way, he can talk through with us on how to also pay the roughly 1.4 million in $4,000 insurance stipens for contractors that go ahead and sign the contract. Okay. So, so we're going to find it in this year's budget. That and that was the great concern. That was the only
045thing I could envision was was to take it out end and fund balance, rob it. But he's okay doing it a different way. Y'all figured it out then. We're trying to figure it out because we're still working on figuring it out. Yes. And and here's here's the dilemma in my mind right now is that okay, this first time we've ever done this. Let's try to get it right. But we'll we'll be faced with this again next year. Yeah, it's a recurring expense. It's going to be a recurring expense. So when do we do it? What what date does it need to be done on? Assuming that even though the contractors won't be signing a new contract next year, they've still got the insurance premium, correct? Doing payable, I guess, the 1st of July, something of
046that nature. And and so we've got to formulate this plan somehow. Mr. Reed deserves a lot of credit. He's worked on this as well. Right. So, great. Great. Yeah. This was on Thursday. It was not on my radar till Thursday and we already had our budget amendments posted and he was Oh, I'm sorry. I keep this on the front burn. You were you were good and Mr. Reed called. So, we had it worked on with the budget amendments and now we're we're working on it. Well, I appreciate it cuz this was one of those this was the part of the contract that I was very stubborn on, I guess, is that I felt very strongly that we need to get that money to the contractors as quick as we could. So, anyway, thank y'all for
047doing that. Yeah. Yes, Mr. Arb. Just for clarity, um, so is the insurance payment part of this amendment? It is not. to be part of the next one. And I'll I'll get into that once I get a little bit further. But that is the reason. I just wanted to clarify why if somebody saw the budget or saw the agenda on Thursday, there were How many amendments did you remove, Brian? Three, four, at least three. Yeah. So, we had a lot more amendments on there. And then we're just going to do one big one just like the county does. And that matches what the county does, too. Sometimes you can be just trying to get everything rolling. He was like, just do it exactly like we do it. Great. Beautiful, right? Yep. One big huge one.
048Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So, this first one, this amendment is to move the current charter schools payment transfers of 3,367,842 from 991590 transfers to other funds to 72310312 board of education contracts with private agencies per the Tennessee controllers office. Also, this amendment adds 500,000 to the 72, 310, 312 expenditure to cover the additional cost to this original budget for the charter school transfer. This increased cost will be funded from additional TISA direct funding RCS receives from the state. And we discussed that a little bit in next year's budget on last Thursday, but this is for this year's budget to go ahead and get it where the controller wants it as well. Okay. Number two, I hope it's going to be the last of it. It will not. It'll be every year recurring. Um, next we have
049budget. So, just uh we had our budget workshop on Thursday and I'm sure we'll get further into this here in just a minute. So, let me revisit. Happy to answer any questions on some of this stuff. I'm scrolling down so that I can get to all this real quick. So our proposed budget for 141 is revenue of 573,385,825. The general purpose school fund expenditures is $581,334,045. That is a deficit of $7,957,222. There is one thing I want to call to everybody's attention. Um, John, can you bring up page 77? I think it's on 77. Let me try to find it real quick. Maybe 78. We noticed this today. Yeah, page 78. This was just a coding thing that was coded to driver's ed when we noticed that early childhood didn't have funding. So, we have
050fixed this, but the courthouse has already sent it to us, but it'll be updated on your presentation um and on the agenda as well. Did we lose it? I'm trying to see. I'm looking for Scroll down a little bit. Right there. So, you see early childhood education on the very far right. And it's got Brian, this one's right. Oh, scroll over to the right further. Sorry. Move over to the right. If you see over to the right, it has zero. And then driver's education has $1.6 million. We do not get $1.6 million in driver's education money. Uh it was incorrectly coded on our end. And that should be 1.3 million in revenue in the early childhood education line. That's two lines up. and then 300,000 roughly in driver's education. So that'll be that'll be fixed.
051When we sent that over to the courthouse, that used to be TISA in Lua payments and it got switched on ours. So we'll have those two lines fixed. What are the actual numbers in those? Driver's ed is 350,000 and early childhood education is 1.3 million and they've already been fixed. Michael fixed them already 10 minutes before I walked in here. Yeah. So, they're not driving Cadillacs and BM. No, we're not. We don't have $1.65 million coming in in driver's education money. That would be really nice if we did, but that is not But then it would offset the cost with zero in early childhood. We do get funding for that. So, I wanted to correct that. The other part, if you can go to page 74, just so the public can see, here's the numbers
052that I'm reading off of. The next fund we have is 143, our cafeteria fund. Again, we are going to the deficit for this on purpose. We are expecting revenue of 26,844250, excuse me, an expenditures of $33,53,92. Thank you. And we are trying to spend that fund balance down. The last couple years, we have budgeted into the deficit of $4 million roughly, and our fund balance is still going up. And we would need to have that at six million or six million. We need to have that at a six-month roughly fund balance. And so we're too high over where we need to be in the cafeteria fund. And so we're still trying to to spend that down. Part of that is some of the equipment that we were trying to buy wasn't necessarily purchased um the
053last couple years. So we're actually purchasing the equipment we plan to purchase the last couple years. Mr. Maxwell, it's Mr. Table. All right. You said I I know we're always trying to spend this one down, but we tried to spend it down last year $4 million deficit and we still added to the the fund. Still added to the fund balance. What was the fund balance that we added to it? Can you pull up the fund B? It wasn't much. It was like a a million, but if you can pull the actual numbers and while he's doing that, I'll go over 177. That's okay. And then 177 is our capital projects fund. This includes what we use for our HVAC, roofing, big capital projects at each school, R1 177 list. This has an increase of about
054$300,000 from previous years. And so that is what is proposed revenue from the courthouse. The big things I wanted to hit on, and I'll probably say the exact same statement again when I get to the financial report later, is 141 does have a 2.9 million increase above maintenance of effort. Uh the revenue is proposed by the mayor's office and the county finance director. And so I thank both of them and the board for hopefully approving on Thursday the revenue. I don't see a reason why we wouldn't approve revenue. Um but thank both of them for that. Um it's it's really exceptional what we're able to do. Uh this year has a 2.5% raise at the table, 17.5% for contractors for bus transportation and $4,000 and then opening a new school. I do just want to
055caution that revenue is always at the discretion of the county commission. So over the next five weeks, I guess, or six weeks, that's something that we're going to have hear conversation about. having a positive just um relationship with our commissioners and talking about that's what we're able to do and why that funding is is such a good thing for us is opening a new school does cost extra funding and most of our funding additionally comes from the state and I think that is important to talk about TISA really helps save our our school system budget uh TISA adds a bunch to our school system budget now part of that is part of the governor's requirement to get to $50,000 so that's where a lot of that funding comes from. So, M. Maxwell. Yes, Mr. Rosales.
056Can you go over the maintenance FR that's above? Yeah. You say it's um 2.9 million above is the mayor and finance director's recommendation right now, but that is all always open to commission's approval and they can do as they desire with that because they are looking at everybody's budget, not just ours. And then my other second question, the $300,000 that we're receiving for fund 177, is that the the money that they are we getting back the money they took out last year when they were take trying to give the races to the police? I think they took like a 250,000 out of the budget or something like that. They did, but this is just an increase in um adequate facilities tax. Okay. So, it is not an additional penny. This does pull roughly a penny
057out of 141. So it is a reduction in a penny, but sales tax is still increased. So that's where the additional revenue is coming from is sales tax. So compared to last year is just an increase of 300,000 after and 177 is an increase of 300,000. A little bit over and 141's increase is largely sales tax and a couple other ones. Right. So, I do anticipate the board getting some questions. Uh, anytime that pennies are moved, you always get emails from the city as well. So, just in anticipate that, but that's outside of ours. And we're 2.9 million is extremely helpful and it's something we need as a school system to be able to operate. Miss Sharp. Thank you, Madam Chair. Uh, Dr. Sullivan, will this be written out, the recommended motion, all of that?
058I'll write out all the numbers and everything. Yeah. With the and everything with 140. Yes, I can write that out. Mr. Bond. Yes. I got a question about the maintenance budget. I think uh the information we got I think you presented last week had a 12.5% decline. Correct. Um, that's just something, you know, we uh we've got to have um we got to have a maintenance budget that will keep up with all the our equipment is getting older and we're going to need older stuff needs more attention. I can speak for that myself. Just getting older takes a lot more. Um, but you know, we uh uh those maintenance guys, boy, they work hard. I can speak from experience. If if you got a problem in school and something goes down, they come running and
059help you out and fix it. And if we don't if we don't keep up, you know, we can't I think they took a cut last year and they're taking a cut again this year. And I think it's just uh u it's going to really eat us alive. I think that if we could any possibility to get back up to put that 12 1/2% back in there. And I also noticed they wasn't in new positions. I don't think for maintenance. That's great. We got a new school and you know those uh those people that just spread thin and I hate to say this cuz if we don't do something about it, it's going to be take a ticket, take a seat and if I'm principal out here at Oakland High School, then my air conditioning goes
060out. You know, I don't want to have to wait until I'm fifth in line till somebody gets there. you know, the way it is now, they they uh they wear themselves out to get there to meet everybody's needs. And I just with adding a new school, I just I don't see us cutting that budget myself. I I just like if there's any way to put that back in there just um I mean, even we got to raise it a little bit for the total budget, it's worth it because maintenance of it's true with anything. maintenance of what you're the equipment you have is so important and uh you know if if if we don't have the maintenance it's going to catch up with us. Can you go to page 94? All right. So here is
061our maintenance line. Um they did request um additional positions and like most of our central office we held steady because if we're cutting from schools and I can't increase at our central office. Um their other big requests they requested box truck uh cuz their box truck's falling apart which we just weren't able to fund because it was 250,000. The big decrease here is that we have decreased our principles have been getting funding to go to schools. So over the last couple years, we've been able to give 50,000 for capital projects at the 177 account and then 50,000 for paint and that type of stuff at the school level. And we have decreased that um to about 7,500 to 10,000 with hopes that we'd be able to come back as the year went on and add
062some of that through 177 and trade some of that off. But that's not paint. That's bigger projects that we'd be able to do. So that's where your reduction is. I totally I totally agree with you. I just don't have the revenue to offset it. I just I you know I just and that's why you see the decreases are going to be in the bottom down there in 72 620 399 other contracted services. A lot of that is your painting services and then in maintenance and repair service buildings. And you can see this this has been new the last couple years. We had gone from 8:16 to 900 to 890 to 12 as we had funding. This year we don't have funding for that. It's 382. Next year we hopefully won't have huge increases in some
063of our areas. We should be able to add some of that back. I just know from a principal standpoint that I agree with you. Yeah. You know, you got to you got to be able to keep the doors open. If the doors don't work, you're in trouble. Anyway, you know, it's just But I just think that's something if somebody would some of these department heads like to donate a little money, put them back in there cuz Yeah. they'd be willing to contribute to get these get these people to work. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Yeah. And kind of go back to that just a little bit. So the log really the logic here is because you're opening a new school, we need that extra money there probably if you the lesser two evils, right? You
064you've got to open the school so therefore the maintenance has to that's where the money's coming from. And and I'll remind I'm g follow up what Butch was saying because you know 25 30 years ago when we dealt with this th this was the directors and some of school board members then were very notorious about swapping money around. They would you know the commission wanted to fund capital projects and then all of a sudden those capital projects didn't get done. commission thought they were paying for them a little bit every year and then all of a sudden we were doing capital outlay notes and the biggest example I can give of that or is the two roofs at Oakland and Riverdale 30 years ago 28 years ago and the revamping of Central when it was
065still a middle school much less after it's turned back into a high school and so I I I know there's nothing we can do about it this year to to stay within that line but I think is Right. We kind of we got to keep knocking at that door just a little bit. I think the commission would be more apt to do it. As the old saying goes, take take your medicine small doses. Let's take it pretty quick instead of taking one great big one five years from now. So anyway, I concur. And we're still I'd like to point we're still better than we were three years ago. We're still there was no money going to that three years ago. So we're still putting money towards it. It's still 60,000 above what schools were getting.
066And for our board, we we have to watch very carefully because of sheared penny. There are a lot of things in 141 that we take care of such as painting your typical just cosmetic things of a school that we cannot take care of in 177 because if you take care of painting in one, that's the easiest example. Brian, is there another example you can think of or try better? what are what are things we don't take care of in 177 because then you have to share the penny if you're funding out of that and that's that's a that's a legal issue then so we we are very and I know our principles get frustrated with it but we are very hard on what is 141 and 177 yeah painting is the main one isn't it
067well that any equipment purchases any uh furniture you know things like that there's a lot of things that that are not capital they're considered maintenance and normal wear and tear. That's kind of your differentiation is wear and tear and capital improvement. So we're that's 141. The other one's 177. And I know and I hate it for our principles being a formal one. It wears you like why can't I that that's a capital project. It's not when you're looking at the legal definitions. I just think your principles be willing to donate the the paint to be able to get the equipment serviced and the maintenance people to uh to be funded, you know, to where they don't have to stroll cuz, you know, I don't know. I just hate to see it go. It makes it
068harder and harder on them. It's more and more demand by a new school and it just the older equipment. It's going to take more maintaining and I just think by going in the negative even though we've done it over the years we're still we got to give them enough money and enough resources to be able to get the job done. We can't expect them to do the job that they're expected to do. Unless we give them the resources uh to do the job. Agree. Mr. Tidwell. Yeah. I'm just going to add another comment on here joining with the other two just saying that you know preventative maintenance is a whole lot cheaper than letting things kind of go along and then they break down and then you have to take care of them. So um
069just being in that field I certainly concur with the other statements here. Of course we can we budget pretty conservatively so the potential of us coming back and hopefully addressing this a little bit deeper seems more realistic. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Then we will move on to the resolution and Mr. Reed this resolution. Okay. So this is and I can read this one. Okay. This is the ED and then I've got some FAQ and I probably should have a copy. Y and I will probably read the FAQ stuff for people watching tonight and do the exact same thing again Thursday night because I know that teachers are watching this. So, this is the Education Freedom Act requires that in order to receive funds for the $2,000 teacher bonuses outlined in the bill,
070the local board of education must first adopt a resolution affirming that they would like to participate in section 4 of the Education Freedom Act of 2025. So, this is this TSPA's model resolution? I thought so. So, this is a resolution by the Rutherford County Board of Education. Whereas Riff County Board of Education is charged with governing the school system so that all students receive the best educational opportunities in order to graduate prepared to enter students prepared to enter a postsecary institution or the workforce. And whereas the Education Freedom Act of 2025 includes a provision providing onetime bonuses of no less than 2,000 to the public school teachers in the state. And whereas section four of the education freedom act of 2025 requires a local board of education for an LEA seeking to participate in section
071four of the proposed act must affirm his intention to participate via resolution in order to receive state funds to issue these bonuses. Therefore, be it resolved that Rutherford County Board of Education affirms it to participate in section four of the Rutherford County or the Education Freedom Act of 2025 relative to bonuses for teachers. So now let me kind of go over some of this because this is we talked about it at our retreat but I want to go over for our staff. This is the Education Freedom Act that was passed in January. It is going to be a little bit strange. So it is for teachers that were employed during the 2425 school year. So let's talk about teacher eligibility first. Teachers had to be employed for 120 days during that time period and this
072is all codified. They had to work 50% of the time in direct instruction with students. And so this is all in our evaluation system called Ten Compass where their evaluations are entered. We had a report pulled on April 15th. We're uploading and making changes to that based on qualifications. A new report will run May 15th. We'll make new modifications. A final one will run June 15th. We'll make our final uploads. And then the funding, where it gets strange, the funding, this is part of the governor's 26 fiscal year budget, which starts July 1st. So, I know our teachers, we've had a lot of questions of when is my $2,000 bonus going to be here? It is not part of the governor's budget. is part of the governor's budget that bel that starts July 1st. Again,
073you have to work 120 days and you have to have 50% direct direct instruction with students. It does not include principles, does not include most of your central office staff, does not include classified staff. It is only direct instruction certified teachers. So, in looking and I was reading the FAQs just a little while ago and what it talks about is this is straight from the state department. The department will calculate the total payment amount and load funds into ean as soon as the funds are available at the beginning of July. And they're working with their partners at local finance to do that. So, it will not be until sometime early July until districts are able to draw down those funds as part of our budget. There's 9.3 million in our budget, which makes our budget
074look even larger than it really is. That is part of it, but we can't start paying that out until we actually receive the money. So, we have to draw it down. Our books and the courouses books are closed in July. So, that's part of the audit process. Your books are closed as you turn those over. Realistically, you're looking sometime in August for teachers to get their $2,000 bonus. Then, we've had a lot of teachers ask, "How much is it actually going to be?" The state is sending down $2,36.60 per person. That covers um yeah, all of your your benefits. We are taxing it. Brian, what did we say? So, we were taxing it like cuz everybody should receive close to 2,000. No extra withholdings, anything like that, right? Just like as a supplemental payment. Is
075that correct? The 2,000? Yeah. It would just be as if you were if you were given a a stop and supplemental payment. Yep. So, it won't be extra tax as close to 2,000 as possible. And that'll be sometime in August is more than likely. If something happens and happens earlier, then we're ahead of schedule, but August is the most likely. New teachers will not receive it. So that's going to be strange. So because again it's just for 2425 school year teachers. If somebody was in another district, they need to contact their previous district, not our district. And we're going to get that question a lot. If someone was in another state, then they're not eligible. Hopefully that made a teacher retires. If they as long as they taught with us this year, then still if
076they don't if they retired, resigned, no longer employed with us for any reason, then they're they'll still get it. So long as they taught 120 days, Miss Mols, thank you so much. Um, I received quite a few inquiries about this from different teachers because they were thinking that we were not making it to the deadline. That was the June 1st. I think it's what we have to submit this. So, I think they will be happy to know that we're going to meet the deadline and submit this in time because they're looking forward to the $2,000. Yeah, they Yep. And we'll have an FAQ on our website by the end of May. Um, probably earlier than that, but budget and graduation is our focus these two weeks. Oh, that's understandable. But the payout is seems like
077it's going to be enough. It's going to be a while because there's no way we're not going to get it from especially with Fourth of July. It's not going to draw down from the state for a while anyways in July. Yes, Mr. VA. We're pretty sure TSBA's got this clearance from State Department education. I sure hope that's why I wanted to go straight with what TSBA had. So, if it's not right and the legislature or the state department of education don't like it, it's on TSBA, not on Right. Correct. Thank you. And I don't believe we're probably the only district that No, most of them are using this one. Some other ones did their own and I liked some of the wording personally of some of them, but I don't know what TSBA recommended. It's
078not a first come, first serve, is it? No. I hope not. No, no, no, no. We made the deadline. Yes. Okay. Next. Number 10. Yep. And number 10, and I'll do some talking on this, too. So, transportation bus purchase request. transport transportation departments requesting to begin the purchase of buses to supplement the current student transportation system. These buses will be utilized to replace unfilled contracts and provide coverage for added transportation needs. There are two local bus companies with buses available to purchase. Central States's bus sales have four 90 passenger buses available for $179,286. They have also provided discounts based on number of buses purchased. Mids south bus sales have eight 90 passenger buses. Five are priced at 170,000. Two are priced at 168,000 and one at 166,000. They also provide discounts based on the number
079of buses purchased. Both companies offer three-year 50,000 miles. Engineering constructions reviewed the request and has no objections. So, couple things just to point out. Funding for this will be part of fiscal year 26 because we would purchase after July 1. Um we'll transfer. So a couple things. Will you pull back up? John, can you go to page 95 and scroll down a little bit? So if you all see line I have a I have a really nice glare. So 72710 315 that is the contracts with vehicle owners. And if you scroll all the way over to the right 33688 that is our amount with our 17% increase and the $4,000 into it. This would come from the anticipated routes that our bus association has said that they anticipate not filling. Uh I have no way
080of not of knowing how many there's going to be. Um I have no way, but we have had contractors even at the courthouse when I present say that without the insurance, not necessarily the raise, but without the insurance, I don't plan on driving. Um I as a director, I have to provide the board options. Uh I think we're in a real likelihood that we are without some type of option. Um because insurance does not seem likely honestly I don't see a way that it is before school starts. Uh we looked at PRZ. We have looked at buses are a hybrid system is next. The only other option for us is doing an RFP. I think that's not a great option for us to have a third party like Hamilton County has. I think that could
081be cost even more cost prohibitive. Um but those that's really the options we have out there. So when look can you go back to that page? Sorry. So the funding would originally come from the amount that is there and we would transfer we do a budget amendment because the overall line your overall account has to make sure that it's not in the negative by the time that you close. We would do a transfer from 72710 315 at some point throughout the year down into 72710 729 which would be I'm guessing transportation equipment or would you want to do it? I don't think there's another bus line. It' have to be I'd have to look on the chart of accounts to see if there is a bus line but if not it would be the 729.
082That would be your first and that's an initial onetime pay. There is of course large increase upfront. Next, what you were looking at is bus drivers. So in looking at other systems, Wilson pays a little bit less, the city pays a little bit more. So it's somewhere between R 106 and 107. For the first year, cuz when an employee starts new, you pay a little bit less. You're looking at one year experience would be 2116. All the way to the end would be 26.98 if they have zero years experience with us. If we started it at 107, it's 2221 to 2879. Um, and again, then the board, we have not drawn up a job description yet because I wanted to see what the board wants to do with buses first. So, did I? Yeah. Yeah.
083Um, could you repeat those fig? Yeah. So, R106 106. And this is this year's, right? So, I don't have it with next year's portion yet. R106 or R107? R106 and R107. Yeah. depending on which one the board I I haven't drawn a job job description yet cuz if we don't purchase buses there's no need for us to go down that road. Yeah. But what was the rate that you um R 106 this year is for a new employee 2116 to 26.98. The way we have it is you start on a new and then you your second year with us you go to a the actual next year where you're employed. So you start off on the scale and then you place the next year. and R107 is 2221 to 2879. And so that would part-time
084not have benefits. A lot of districts have to go to full-time though and have benefits uh to have to hire drivers. I'm sorry. Let me get clarity on that again to the benefit side. You're saying part-time does not have benefits. If you hire full-time, you do have benefits. They're going they're going to get in pay for their experience. Like if they've been driving for five years, they get credit for that. What do we do for experience right now for classified? Dr. Anthony, what do we do for classified? Classified in my side of the street is typically they bring in back up with what they've been doing and then I would review it and make a recommendation to HR. Okay, Miss Darby, that was actually going to be one of my questions. Um, and going over
085a lot of this and doing some research with some other districts and stuff, I've been left feeling insanely conflicted about this whole thing. Um, I think it's an odd thing to be discussing the buses without knowing kind of where we sit. I don't know if there's an option because I know we're concerned about our budget to approve the money where it is and potentially move it if it has to be moved based off of decisions. Because here's the thing. If if we have half of our contractors accept the contract as we voted on the raise last last time and the other half decide not to drive, I don't feel comfortable making this decision without knowing like what are those 150 buses going to cost if we do them ourselves? What would it cost to have
086an outside company do them? Because fiscally, we need to weigh what all of that looks like versus what it looks like to be able to give more money potentially in the contract if that's what's going to bring more contractors back on board. I just feel like there's still a lot of unanswered questions. I'm that's just something I'm kind of throwing out there to the board, I guess, because it I I think we're just kind of in a weird spot. Um I wish there had been deeper discussion about this a while back. Um, I'm a little disappointed that that the contract didn't go a little more. I think my expectation was that it was going to get discussed with contractors and get brought to the board as a whole, like this is what they're looking for.
087What does the board want to do? And we would have gone back to the contractors and then they would have potentially come back to the board. I feel like there's been discussions with a lot of different people, but it wasn't really brought to the board as those discussions were happening, which I think has just kind of put us in an odd spot. Yes, Mr. Ted. Uh, that was I had a follow-up question to that. Um, I'm glad Miss Darby asked that question as well, but my understanding this is we are approving this purchase to happen right now or we are approving the potential for it to happen because a lot of it would depend on what comes back from the contract. So, can you kind of walk us through when the deadline is for the
088contract so that we will know exactly how many contractors did move forward, how many didn't? because we've had I've had multiple contractors reach out to me and say, "Hey, if there's routes open, we would like first dibs." Yeah, I have too. And ultimately contractors would have the the really the first dibs on the routes. Um that's also my concern. I just want the board to be aware that it a real possibility. I of course will support whatever the board decides. But at the end of the day, with PRZ, with this, with RFP, when a district gets asked, why do we not have transportation services, the board decided not to purchase buses, the board decided not to have PRZ, we're going to have to have those tough conversations, and that that has to be part of
089I don't I don't want to have that answer, but that has to be part of my answer when we make recommendations. So, can I follow up with that? Um so let let's run through a scenario here. Uh let's say that we have roughly 40 open routes including the 10 y the roughly 10 is it 10 to 12 for the elementary? 10 to 12. Yeah. 10 to 12 for the elementary. And then out of those you have I don't know uh you have contractors current contractors pick up 10 or 15 of those and that's still going to leave us with 25 routes. This helps cover some of those. Doesn't cover all. Yeah. Is is there is there an opportunity if this insurance thing which I'm going to talk about the insurance thing when we get to
090the contract as well but is there a possibility that if insurance obviously is not going to make the deadline this year just it's just not possible. So, you know, it could come in later in the year. We can talk about that in a minute. But for those that were holding out because of insurance, could they potentially, if they wanted to, I'm not saying this is could happen. I'm just putting it out there as an option. Come work as an employee or for the county and then that would give them the opportunity to be under insurance. I mean that I don't know any other way for them to be. Yeah, we've had a couple reach out and say we still want to drive. Can we sell our bus? because unfortunately if and I've reached out to
091risk management as well and their response was if the county purchased the buses are they covered and reached out to the underwriter to find out and then you'll have a slight increase in your payments but yes um they'd be covered underneath the county because then they're county owned property I know that's that's probably not what a lot of I know it's not that's not what people want to hear but you're in every path you're exactly right like I've said before and I can't say it enough I don't want to be in the bus business. We are a large district and I don't want to I don't want to manage another department. Uh we are large enough and those of you that talk to me or walk or come through and you can see I'm on
092the phone non-stop every minute of every day trying to play whack-a-ole with something going on every day. I don't I don't want to manage another department. Um but that I'm trying to get as much service to as many kids as possible with the reality of we're going to have shortcomings to start the year. Well, it sounds like you're it and uh this is the way that I've took it is that we are preparing for a worst case scenario in the hopes that this is not even needed. So, you're right. And then what I look at from the other points, not in a worst case scenario, um I definitely I mean it would have been great if I had 1.6 million in driver's ed money. This would have covered some of it. Um, but to offset
093some of that, we used to use driver's education money to buy activity buses for our schools. We have not purchased an activity bus that I know of since I've been director, you know, four or five years. It was good. Why it lasted? Yeah, it was at least four or five years. So, I I mean, I can just read down the just real quick and I'll email this to y'all how old our buses are. And so in a worst case scenario, in a best case scenario, all of our routes are filled. Our contractors have have come through with the ones who haven't decided not to proceed with a future contract. Our contractors have covered the rest of the routes. We've purchased 10 to 12 buses that I can now replace our routes that need new buses.
094Um, I'll just read real quick, and again, I'll send this to you. Here's how old our buses are at the activity bus level. What's the number of buses? Yeah. The question I asked was how many do we have? I get fussed at because I don't cut my microphone. 31. So there's 31 bus. 33, but two are now out of service as of this year. So basically not quite one per school. We've got more. Well, there this is only high school. Oh, this is the high school. Only high school. So, we So, we have uh Yeah, four per high school math, right? Not everybody is uh treated equally. Some have uh you didn't have to say. Yep. So, and some have purchased different ways potentially. Understand? Hopefully. Understand. But I'm not going to get into all
095that. But um didn't mean to steal your thunder, but the age of them. Yep. I'll say like this year for example 2008 Leverne High School had a bus and it is no longer in service. End of life. Rock Springs Middle had a bus they purchased themselves in 2005. It went away a couple years ago. They were the only middle school. So Blackman High School has one that is 9 years old. Blackman High School has another that is 16. So it's ending end of life. Blackman High School has another that is five. Blackman High School has another that's 12. So they've got four. And so we're running into some treacherous times here. We replace those. So state law apply to activity buses like it does route buses. I'm getting a lot of up and Okay. Y
096it does. And I don't have right in front of me whether these are big buses or small buses. I just have the VIN number. Most of them are big buses. Okay. Madam Chair. Yes, Mr. Arby. Dr. Svin, can you speak to the activity buses? Yes. What do they serve? Are these the band buses? Yes. Field trips. that kind of after school, all that kind of stuff. So, because we're throwing everything at the wall to see already thrown this out there, too. Yeah. Um, is it not possible to have our current contractors serve in that capacity as well? In those buses, they're wrapped and I don't think would be eligible. The most of these buses have either been painted or wrapped. And once they're painted or wrapped, they can only be used as an activity bus.
097They cannot be general purpose transportation. No, I'm talking the opposite manner. Meaning, if you have some bus drivers whose routes end early and they want to drive Stewart's Creek band to wherever they're going for the football game that night, can we not utilize our current contractors and their school buses in the activity capacity? We do, but it's usually more expensive. So if we have coaches that are already employed, then we use our coaches on our buses. Y more expensive like when you're talking about in the moment, but I would wonder at the cost of how much the new buses are, what does that look like with the inflation of the new buses going up? I I mean, I'm just throwing out all all ideas. Um I have a couple questions, too. Just trying to understand.
098I know you sent the email. Thank you for that. for the uncovered routes. Um, when you talk about that, like it says the following were down for an extended period of time, 30 days or more, does that mean they didn't have coverage at all or does that mean that that bus couldn't run the route and it had to be covered by someone else? Can you speak to that at all? Trey, that would be correct. That bus is not running and either we provided coverage or the contractor provided coverage. Okay. It does not mean that like those particular routes this the kids didn't have service in in in limited situations. Yes, they did not have transportation but it it gets covered within a day or two. Okay. So, so the two that are here that say
099uh 194 and 278 are currently without a driver. Are they still currently running? They're just being covered by someone else. Covered. Okay. So, my understanding is when we have a route open like that, and I'm just trying to understand how all this works, it goes through a process, I think like a three tier process of being put out to our contractors. Is that correct? They have to they get 30 days to to get the bus back up and running. then there's another possibility. But once the contractor turns in the route, then we have a route, then it becomes open and we do have a three-step system to someone acquiring the route. Okay. So, have those two gone through that process already? They have not, but they have received their letters. They're in the process of,
100and to be perfectly transparent, there's 11 days left in the school year. I'm not interested in trying to get rid of a bus contract with 11 days to go. Now, that's going to sound unfair to someone who may have, you know, back at the middle of the year that after the 30 days and we recommended to you guys that they the contract be, you know, removed. It's a it's a fairly lengthy process before that contractor's routes taken. So, is it fair to say that those two though like for the start of this next coming school year would start in that first tier process at the start of the year? If they don't have drivers when come July that are CDL certified, I'm going to recommend they don't get their route. Well, wouldn't they already be
101out of the route at the end of the 30 days or does it start over at the beginning of a school year? It starts over. But what I'm saying is because of where we are today when they get I'm not gonna I'm not going to recommend we re-up a contract with somebody who's not in good standing and then can't provide me with the driver. They're going to have to have all their ducks in a row when they get ready to sign their contract. And if they don't, I'm going to recommend we take the route and put it back out for open receiving. Okay. So the the eight buses that we're talking about purchasing, can you speak Dr. Svin specifically to what those are to I understand that if if all works out in a perfect
102world, we'll have some new activity buses if we end up purchasing. I don't think that's realistic. Yeah. But if not, the purpose in purchasing these is to fill where we have openings. And I think it's going to be a random oops spot across the county teacher top of my hands. Random spots across the county. So we will train I talked about this the other day with Popular Hill opening everybody that's in current routes shifts and so like Steuartsboro is losing some, Blackman Elementary's losing some. And please step in on this because I you know a lot more about routing than I do. the the way we we caught collapsing. Typically, when you open a new school, the routes that are around it, you you're affected by three schools that the new school takes its place.
103This year's drastically different because we're reszoning the whole county elementary wise. So, instead of just being the buses that support those three schools, now it's the buses kind of sort of all over the county. So we're rerouting elementarywise the entire county. So the premise still kind of remains the same. We've done our best to not take a bus that's always driven last gases and send them to Lever. So we call it collapse. You just you kind of take those buses that are on the periphery supporting uh Browns Chapel, Stewartsboro, Blackman, Stewarts Creek Elementary. Those four schools are the four closest routes. Those buses in some shape, form or fashion are going to slide to collapse to pick up Popular Hill. And then the buses that are a little bit further out, you see what I'm
104saying? They just all kind of shift a little bit. Nobody really gets sent to the other end of the county. That's our intentions. That's kind of the way we've always done reszonings. This year's going to be a little bit different. So we would basically have those routes, those buses that are in those areas, they would know what their route is prior to school starting and then that would be the route. But we're what we're going to know in theory is by July 1 who's in and who's out. So, we will begin to know prior to the routes being finished where those holes are, if there are holes. Best case scenario, there's no holes. Makes my life a whole lot easier if there's no holes. And the alternative buses, if if the board was to decide
105to eliminate that service, that's additional buses, but most of those buses are short buses. How many buses is that? Do we know? I can get you an answer by Thursday. I'd be interested to see that. And when you say alternative, are you meaning all alternative transportation or just the alternative schools? No, the alternative schools where we're where we've been providing. My understanding is they they ride the bus to their home school and then they get on another bus and get taken over. Some do, some don't, some have doortodoor and then we have other alternative and all special education would stay, but then they're stay there. I'm talking about that. Um I I'm just trying to I'm trying to piece together. I'm trying to understand because part of my concern too is we could buy these
106buses to fill the potential holes that are coming up and we could end up having buses and no one to drive them because my understanding is there are other districts struggling to fill bus driver positions as well. I know I spoke to I think it was Williamson County um and that would be a concern because their starting pay for their bus drivers is $23.65. Yeah. So we may have to go to 107. Yeah. So that's there's a lot of working pieces. Another question would be once we get these buses, is transportation going to need another position to monitor and keep up with the maintenance on those buses? Where are they going to be stored? It's it's a lot of it's a lot. This is what I mean. Like there are so many working pieces to
107this that I don't feel like have been fully talked about, walked out, and it makes me ler of us making these really big decisions without having some of these answers better put in place. Melville. Yes, Mr. Tidwell. Uh, yes. So, quick quick think. What if we were to order the buses? How long does it take to get them? 60 days. We basically have till the end of this month to place an order if we want them here by August. Otherwise, they're going to sell them to someone else. They're holding them till the 1st of June. Well, I mean, again, I was looking at this as a backup plan and I'm also looking at this as activity buses had not been brought up as an actual issue until tonight. I'm just trying to come up with
108worst case scenarios. You're exactly right. Right. And I get that, but what are we talking about? How much how many millions of dollars talking here? 2.2 2.9 I don't know. I didn't do the math. So, I'm guessing over 2 million somewhere between two and three. Um I don't necessarily want to spend that money if we don't have to spend it. So, I'm wondering if we have if we can reach out to our current contractors and ask them and say, "Let us know by June." Uh, let us know by June 1st. And then we can we can approve this as an option that based on what we get the feedback by June 1st whether or not y'all make the decision to move forward with those purchases because you would have some kind of idea. We got
10940. We got 30 positions. We got 12. Something like that. What I don't want to do is I do not want to take away I don't think it's fiscally makes sense to take away routes if it's if we lose 10 or 12 or 10 or 12 15 whatever open routes non-renew and those are picked up by our current contractors. I just don't think the extra $3 million makes sense. M. So that's what I'm on. Sorry. Go ahead. Yes, Miss Rosales. Okay. So, how many routes do we have right now in the 2024 2025 total? 332. Yep. 332. How many of those 332 have been unfulfilled this year? Off and on uh average maybe 10 or 12. 10 to 12. But they when you say cover, does that mean that a new contract gets picked up?
110No. contractors adjacent to them or their buddies cover the route. So there's 10 to 12 con 10 to 12 um routes that do not have a contract. No, no, they have a contract. Okay. The bus is not running at some point, but they have a contract. So confusing to me because if we're talking up from filled routes, I'm thinking it's a route that is not does not have a contract that not being No, that that's an un that's Well, when we say unfilled, we're talking future. We're not talking present. Unfilled means there's going to be some contractors that are unable to or choose not to provide their own insurance, right? Therefore, they would be unfilled, right? So year before, so we had all the routes covered there. We did not have issues with a route
111not having a contract out of the 332. There's never not been a issue with throughout this year. We've had 10 routes that have had periodically over 30 days and they're picked up by another contractor or somebody else to cover it, but we are still paying that contract like it's running. That's where the school system's financial issue is. We want to talk about fiscally conservative and watching taxpayer funding. We are paying a contract that is not being fulfilled by that contractor within 30 days at any point. We have no mechanism to show that that contractor is not being filled. Okay. I'm just trying to understand the whole thing of the contracts what is filled not filled in this whole 332. So I think my other question is the contract the contract for the bus contractors expired
112in June 30th, right? Will it be possible to know if all cuz now we're going to have 332 plus what's the new contracts? What are the new routes that we're going to have now? 10 roughly because we haven't drawn routes. So it's like 342 new contracts, right? So I think can like he was Mr. Tidwell was saying is there a possibility to get a have a deadline of when all these con all these routes can be filled and picked up by the contractors so that we can know that we're getting them filled. All right I'm what if to get this money for the insurance to the contractors you're going to have to have a headcount and a commitment. They're going to have to have a signed contract to be able to get the insurance money
113to get their insurance in place for July one. The contract is what's going to tell us who can and who can't. So I think my question is we know that this the contract is going to expire in June 30th, but if we know that they're going to be committed like let's say by June 1st, let's say because we're going to vote on this contract regardless either way. And so they're going to have potential to sign the contract before the contract expires. So, if they have the potential to do that, can we have a deadline of some sort to say? I think we're trying to say the same thing. They're going to have to have a signed kind here. Here's where we sit. This is the second week in May. Mhm. For them to have checks
114in time for them to have insurance, we need to be cutting checks in two weeks. Right. Absolutely. To to for and I'm speaking for Michael at the courthouse. If we don't if we don't have a contract for these folks to sign, whether they agree to sign it or not is irrelevant for this conversation. But if they don't have a contract to sign in two weeks from now, there's no way the insurance is going to be the insurance checks are going to be cut to be able to get to them to get their insurance in time because the county shuts down for the last week and a half of June and the first week and a half of July. I can't get POS. you can't get checks. So, we've been we're we're operate. We got four
115weeks to vote on a contract, get these people in here, sign a contract, get the information to Michael Smith so that he can get a check cut. We will know as soon as you say this contract's approved or not approved, whatever y'all vote for, then they can say yes or no. They're gonna have a week and a half to decide whether or not they're going to do it, right? If you vote Thursday. Yeah. But [Music] irregardless, they're gonna have they meaning the bus contracts will have the first zips to pick up all 342. And so if all the routes are covered, have a contract, whatever you want to call it, then we could potentially use those 10 buses for activity buses to replace some of these buses. That's not a me decision, but I would
116say yes. And Mr. Lee, because I think that we will need to give them priority first, the bus contractors that they're going to pick up those routes. And if they do, then the backup will be that we allow to them to be used as activity buses cuz some of these buses are on the last leg anyways when it comes to activities. June 1st, their hard deadline, I'm sure. June 1st, their hard deadline, I'm sure. To me, the Yes. Or they're going to sell them to somebody else. I don't blame them. They're they're sitting here at the time of the year. They've agreed to hold them till June 1 as a because they're in our community. But I I would not want to even brooach I'm not picking up well I say I'm not I would
117prefer not to pick up the phone and call them and ask them would they extend it. I don't think that's unfair. I think that's unfair practice. That would be unfair to them. Yeah, it would be. Madam Chair, I don't I don't you know personally I just don't think we have any option because just like the PRZ we've got to furnish transportation. You hold that just for a second, Miss Darby. I had already given her the floor. Oh, I'm sorry. Excuse me. When we talk about um the contractors covering someone else's route, just want to clear up so I can understand. I understand somebody has a contract and is getting paid to run that route. So bus 135 can't run their route. So they call their buddy on bus 154 and they're going to cover that
118route for them. We are paying bus 135. the original. Correct. But we aren't then paying additional for 54. They work that out between themselves. Correct. Correct. And if they cannot, they ask us to assist and at that time we do pay the contractor. So, okay. So, if they're unable to cover the route themselves, they will call you and you will have someone cover it and then you have to pay additional monies to have that covered. Correct. And they don't get paid. But but then the original contractor does not get paid. Correct. Okay. So there's no financial difference. Correct. If you've got if you've got bus drivers who I'll cover your route and what happens on a daily basis right at the last second have just put those kids on my bus. There would be do
119I want to get into the ins and outs on that on camera of what happens on a dayto-day on transportation that happens. I don't I guess I'm I'm not clear on on fiscally how that's go for it. No, I'm just when you're through that's it. I'm just trying to understand that. And the second question before I forget sure would be when we talk about the contract, is it possible for us to put a deadline on it of May 29th and then the board if we needed to could come back on May 30th to vote on whether or not to purchase the buses because quite honestly if we end up in a really bad spot, we may be talking about purchasing additional buses other than just eight. You want to hit on that? Well, we've got
120some contractors that have already reached out and said, "If I decide not to sign my contract, I've got five years left on my bus. Are y'all interested in buying it?" Yeah. And I I don't want to go down this rabbit hole at all. That's a possibility, Dr. But they are I've had I got another email last night. Got a nice new bus. Yep. Go ahead, Stan. No. And and boy, I man, this is one field I wished I didn't know a whole lot about. And I thought all the rest of y'all knew about this since most of you had already been through a contract once before. But you talking about getting an education from this group and this group back here. And I thank all of them for for bringing me up to speed because
121I have had a crash course in the last 90 days. Our contractors do a phenomenal job. They really do. Because if you if you get to if you've ever been involved with logistics, whether at the you've worked at the post office or you've driven an over the road truck or Amazon or anything like that, it is an absolute miracle that that things get to where they are on time, much less 30,000 kids to school on time every morning and every and get back home in the afternoon. Um, I spent the better part of a day with Trey U couple of weeks ago just to hear just to see visited with all the ladies uh in the back office understood their job descriptions um and how they work and I and I'm giving you a lot
122of sidebar right now but but this is where this is all coming from is you have a lot of co you you have a lot of cooperation with some contractors. There's a lot of contractors, they get along, they cover each other. Hey, I've got a flat tire. My bus didn't start this morning. Battery's dead. Especially on those 17°, 12°, 8° morning. Some of these diesel motors that weren't plugged up the night before don't really want to crank. And so there's all kinds of chatter going on. I guess it starts at about 5 5:30 in the morning with these people. And I'm going to say probably 80 85% of them get along pretty good and cover each other. They have a backup plan. Some of our larger contractors, they have those backup buses that I talked
123about earlier, uh, you know, covering the insurance on those. Some of them, the the sing what I call the owner operators, the singleshot people, you know, they cooperate or they affiliate with somebody that does have a backup bus. So it's really really amazing if if you stop and think about it that everybody gets to where they're supposed to be on time. Uh now talking about you know kind of moving forward on this. So I congratulate all of them for working on it. But going through the negotiation process here we have been you know back and forth for 90 days here with the contractors with the association with the independents. I've talked to I know 42 of the independents myself. Uh, some of it very very positive, some of it not so positive. One of my
12450-year-old friends from Igleville called and reame my tail out two weeks ago because he didn't think I was for the bus drivers that I was doing my job as the leazison trying to cover this insurance and making everybody understand about the insurance and I can't I hate to go back to that right now but talking about this expenditure now I've circled all back around because I have dealt with this I understand it some some buses We've got 20 kids on. We may not have but eight or nine or 10 on a route, but some of them are packed to the gills. There there's there's there it's but they have to they transportation has to design a route knowing that there's a potential that kid could get picked up in the morning and have to be
125home that afternoon. They never know from day to day. Most of these bus drivers do. They they the parents are real good about telling them, "Hey, you know, Sus's got a dental appointment tomorrow. She won't be here or she's not riding the bus home. I'm getting her at school." All that kind of stuff goes on. But I I don't know what the big deal is about buying 10 or 12 buses. I really really don't hear because of two or three reasons. We've had an association that has told us as soon as two weeks ago they were going to park every one of the buses on a Thursday morning. Well, I have to take them at their word and I think this board would not be prudent and our director I was fix to say something
126ugly. Dang sure wouldn't be doing his job and the transportation department wouldn't be doing their job if they did not start formulating some kind of backup plan. Now, what I've heard Dr. S and say tonight is, hey, maybe this is a direction we want to go in. If if we don't have 100% participation in the new contract, we've got some buses and we can experiment. I'm going to call it an experiment, pilot program, whatever you want to call it here. I don't think Trey wants to do any wants to take this on, but we as a board have taken on transportation for this county. So, we've got to make every preparation possible. And so, buying 10 or 12 buses in in my view is is really not that big a deal. And he's telling you,
127hey, if we had 100% participation, we've got how many buses? 30 buses that are that are getting old like I am that kind of needs updating. The worst we end up doing in this deal is is replacing a bunch of old activity buses. And we continue on and we have, you know, 332 contractors signed right back up, contracts signed and 10 of these new ones are awarded and kumbaya and happily ever after and everything's a-ok. Okay. So that I I don't I don't see it is a capital expenditure. I I did talk, now this was hinted to me from the courthouse two or three weeks ago when this when I first heard about this that if we got into this uh you know, let's say only half of the contractors signed back up and we're
128faced with buying, you know, 10, 20, 30 buses a year that we would end up doing a capital outlay note of some kind and financing these. I think the and I say the bunch at the courthouse. I'm talking about everybody at the courthouse. The the the not blaming this on the mayor or the finance office or the county commissioners. Just a concerted effort of hey, what are y'all going to do? Well, hey, here's what we're going to do, I guess, as a backup plan. I I don't know. I don't I'm like Trey after visiting with all these contractors. I think we got some of the best people in the world taking care of our kids. But I understand the reluctance. Some of my very closest friends have are scared to death about this insurance right
129now. And and I'm trying to give them what guidance I can about business structure or insurance. And you know, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I don't mind offering what little advice I can give, but I I just again, I don't think it's I think it's a big it's a big deal in one sense, another sense. You know, I've seen this bunch up here spend four, five, $6 million and not even hesitate. Uh, so I mean, that's my two cents worth. Do you have anything else? Yeah, I would say thank you because ultimately it's not something I want to get involved with, but I have to prepare for all scenarios and I think it's also fair to mention this is not the first time that this has come up. Um, we've discussed
130this off and on for months. Um, we discussed it at our retreat. We discussed it at multiple meetings with the attorney mentioned when he said our people won't sign. And I mentioned at that direct meeting with the attorney standing right there, if you're telling me you're not going to sign, I have to start looking at purchasing our own buses. And so to act like that for the public when they talk like this is new to us. It's not something we I ever want to recommend, but providing transportation services to our families is something that we saw with mentioning the PRZ. That is definitely something that is valued uh rightfully so in this community. And I've got to provide options to the board of all different types of scenarios whether I like it or not. We
131wouldn't be doing our job as a board if we did not prepare for worst case. I was in line. Yeah, I was the linebacker. So that's true. Yeah, that's why he's been waiting. He had to wait. I didn't. Yeah. I completely agree with Mr. V. You know, I don't think that we can afford to gamble, you know, because we've been told that certain drivers are not going to be able to get insurance. And the worst thing ever, I learned one thing from this PRZ. All these parents that are concerned about PRZ, if you don't support us in buying these buses, I'm going to come looking for you because if we don't have them and we don't have a bus to come pick your kids up, then you know, we got to have your support in
132this. So, I agree with Mr. B. We, you know, I don't see that we have any choice but to buy them. you know, just to uh I don't take the chance. You know, if I was that big of a gamble, I'd be in Las Vegas, I guess, but I just don't want to do it. Miss Sharp. Thank you, Madam Chair. Um, listen, I don't agree with this. Um, I understand Dr. Sullivan's point. I think before we go too much further down this road that the madam chair needs to put together an ad hoc team and look at how much it's going to cost for owning, how much it's going to cost for subtracting, and how much it would be subcontracting, and then how much to to buy out these buses. We have no plan here.
133We've got all these things, but we can't get too far down the road on some of these things and go, "Oh, well, this is not going to work and it's gonna it's going to cost too much money." When we as the county as the school board looked at moving from the county insurance to the state's insurance, there was a committee put together to study it and they studied all the ins and outs of this and I think that we owe this to the taxpayers to study this. Yes, Mr. T. I mean, can I say one more thing? Yes, m sorry because I had to write my notes down here. Uh because listen, almost three weeks ago, we voted on the uh RFP and to my knowledge. It's not been done. It's not even been started.
134So why I mean I think we there's people out there that have whiplash from this that we'd have to do the PRZ own because we got to save money. And then when the parents rose up, they were like, "Okay, okay, well, we still need to save money, but now we're turning around and going, well, we're going to spend $4 million on these buses. We don't have anywhere to park them. We don't have anybody to drive them. We don't have anybody to maintenance them and we have no idea how much all of that's going to cost. None whatsoever. We're just shooting around in the dark. It is what where we are. Mr. We Mr. Tidville next and then you I promise it is. It's where we are, but we need to at least try to put
135ad hoc committee together and look at this to see that we're not going down the wrong road with this. Mr. Yeah. Yeah, I mean the majority of these members have only been on the board two and a half years. It's a four-year contract, so we this is the first time going through. But that I do have a good understanding of it. Talked to a lot of these folks. Um I I'm not against the idea. I appreciate Dr. Sullivan bringing it up. We've had conversations about what the backup plan would look like. So I don't want to make it seem like I'm just dead set against it. What what I'd be dead set against is if we have I I don't think that if the activity buses is such a priority then that we're going to
136do do this and then use it to replace them then if we have a need for these buses the these 12 buses when the routes come are we then going to come back and ask for 12 more for the activity buses so to me the need is not as strong as it's being made let out to be. I'm wondering the timeline and I think that's where really this board is held up on is we're just trying to figure out those that are if I could be I'm assuming here and that's always going to get me in trouble but those that are immediately for it are thinking of the timeline which I understand of we got to have a backup plan in order in time. I get that. Where I am considering at the possibility of
137having a backup plan and also trying to save as much taxpayer money as possible is seeing how many contractors we will have participating. And then those that you mentioned mentioned Dr. Sullivan about potentially joining with us. Um and because of the county insurance that's not going to happen before August. uh that that's a that's a major factor for some that they might be willing to you know sell us their buses as as they have mentioned and we have some employ we turn into a little bit of a partial county but it gives options it's favoritism toward the people that have already been serving our county for many many many many years. Um so that's that's just kind of where I'm at. I'm just thinking it through. I'm not I'm not dead set on one side
138or the other. Mr. spot. I miss Sharp. I think you're spot on and I mean I think we need a budget Trey. I I apologize to the rest of the board. I have played with numbers and dealt with numbers for the last three months and I kind of know everybody's cost and operational cost and labor cost and insurance cost and depreciation cost and all that. But I think Trey Trey, you could probably if you don't already have some type of budget put together to operational budget or can you put one together for Thursday night or what it would take to run them ourselves? Yeah. Yeah. I mean what it you know just I mean we need we need to look at some type of depreciation cost I guess and then you know the f fuel
139I mean put it on paper what I kind of know in my head right now. in parking. We park them like we allow some of our contractors to park at our spots right now. Yeah. I I think you would park the uh Well, and that was still correct. That was one thing that came out of my discussion with them. If you remember, I brought to the board that they were asking for the every time we build a new school now that we would program spots in to to park and then even places like my group at Last Casses. Wondered if the state testing could be done at Last Casses Elementary or Oakland or something like that. So, those are those are little incremental things I think we can do, but can you throw some kind
140of budget together between now and Thursday? That's a lot to ask you. I know. I'll see what I can do. I'm off tomorrow, but I'll I'll do my best to have it by Thursday. Thank you. I I agree with you, but I was at Rocky Fork Middle on Good Friday and there was a fleet parked there. So, I was as shocked as you were that they were sitting there. But I drive by buses all the time or schools all the time and they're there. The the the main reason we discourage it is because once we allow private contractors, we can't discriminate. So, we'll have to let the tow trucks and the tractor trailer trucks park as well. that that that's where it becomes. Plus, we don't have any it's a liability. We don't have any
141insurance for We own tow we own tow trucks. No, ma'am. But we have neighbors that do and they want to park in our parking lots, but they but they're not servicing our children. They're contractors are contractors. We can't differentiate between these contractors and other contractors letting people park. Yes, Mr. Darby. That's all I'm saying. I don't have anything. I got you. I think some some of the issue is communication. Um because we were told that the parking lot would not was not built to hold a school bus and now it's kind of being said that it's something else. So, and it may be one way at one school and another way at a different school, but I think when we can be super clear and concise, even if we have to label per school, it's
142probably helpful to clear up because there there's some tension between, and I will tell you firsthand as a schoolboard member, I'm not going to speak for everybody, but sometimes I feel very stuck in the middle because I will have one person on this side of a situation tell me one thing and someone on this side tell me something else, and I'm stuck in a place of just trying to figure out where the legitimate information is. And it doesn't mean anybody's lying, but it can be something as simple as just not all of the communication is there. So, let me just throw that out there. But, can we try to get what Mr. Lee is going to put together? I don't know if you're going to look at that as far as if we were to
143to do it completely, what it would look like if we're doing it partially, what it's going to look like if we're just doing 10 buses. because like if it's 10 buses, maybe we don't need a mechanic. Maybe we just need someone to monitor the maintenance and stuff on them and not a full-on mechan. But all of those pieces are things that need to be looked at. Um, I'd also like to get the number of buses for the alternative schools that would come back into play if we removed that service. Um, and I'd like to look at the activity buses, what that like the cost of those buses along with any cost that's going to go along with those in comparison to what it looks like to pay our current contractors to run those activities in
144their buses. I think I think it's prudent for us to to look at all of those options to decide those things. And I'm totally in favor of asking our contractors for a May 29th deadline on signing the new contract. Asking those contractors that are interested in selling their buses to let us know by May 29th if they're selling their bus and how much they want for it and if they plan on driving for the district if that becomes an option. Because I think once we have a lot of those answers in place, it makes it easier to make those decisions about buying the new buses because we have all of the information to make a good decision. Miss Maxwell, can I address part of that? Just a moment. Dr. Sullivan had something. I was just
145going to address just be aware that uh of course I'll get that information. Um the principles are going to have a whole lot of push back on the activity buses. um they can pay their coach $3,000 a year to drive their bus compared to That's what I was going to agree on that compared to right now they will pay I know one school in particular um pays to go to an elementary school and what is what do we pay for the MTSU $75,000 to budget our kid to bust our kids over there for one day. Is that what we're doing? $25,000 $25,000 for the MTSU basketball thing a day. Um just for one day. I will always look to of course fill the board's request, but I also want to look to make sure that
146we're being feasible with what makes sense for our schools and from an operational standpoint. That's going to be a hard sale with our principles. So, I just want you to be aware of push back from that. Yeah, I was going to answer that from the principal standpoint. You're never going to get the principles to go along with that because one, you you hire a coach and he part of his job is to drive you and that's free. You know, you're paying him anyway and to pay the cost of getting these contractors who can't afford it. They just school just can't can't afford to do it when you got drivers for free. And uh so that's max I have a question. So the activity buses um when they break down or they need anything we pay
147for it. We Right. But how does that work? Do do we have a mechanic or any in house or do they do we take it to Bluebird or what's the process of that look like? They go to the bus dealership. Okay. So, so if we were to have these buses, it will go through the same process that the activity buses go through is what I was trying to get. Small number. Yes. And then um Yeah. Okay. Okay. Dr. Sullivan, Starve, I have one last question before I forget. Is it possible to check with and I forget the name of the company we got the RFP for the third party company? Yeah. Is it possible for someone to reach back out to them and find out if that pricing would stay the same if they were
148to service even more routes for us? Because I'd just like to have I think that's a piece of the puzzle just knowing where all of the figures sit. I think by and I'd have to check with Joanne. It's beyond the 45 days. So we'd have to rebid the RFP. Yep. Yeah. For an official, is there no way to just get a general idea if it would that amount or not for bidding purposes? No. To make sure that we were legal. No. Yes, ma'am. Short. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Lee, how would we uh appraise the buses? How would if we I've got that. Hold on one second. Sorry. I asked like is there a blue book for I asked that on uh is yes. I asked that on Friday just in. So this is from
149our purchasing director. So this is from Yes, this is TCA 1201 and this is a Friday. So that's how new the purchasing of used buses is. And then TCA 1231 1208. So TCA 1231201 or I think that's three TCA 31201 and TCA 123 1208. So, notwithstanding any charter, private act, or general law requirements, any municipality purchase any municipality or any county may purchase used or secondhand articles consisting of goods, equipment, materials, supplies, or commodities from any private individual entity without public advertisement and competitive soliciting as long as the purchasing government documents the general range of value of the purchased item through a listing at a nationally recognized publication or through an appraisal by a licensed appraiser and the price is not more than 5% higher. higher than the highest value documented uh range. So, we
150would have to get with an appraiser. We'd have to make sure that our purchasing documents through the county um allows it as well. So, that is our first two steps. Okay. Because that would that's new for us. Yeah. You know that they're going to ask. Yeah. You know, somebody's gonna ask. I mean, somebody's already called and said he'd sell the bus. So, Yes, Mr. Mr. Bond. Yeah. You know, I like for us to look at the uh that we buy the buses from the people maybe that um decide they can't get insurance or don't want to drive, but you know, and then we can maybe hire them to drive for us and put them on the county insurance fulltime and give them benefits. It may be a good deal for them. To the board to
151decide. If we get down that far, I'll have probably two job descriptions, one part-time, one full-time, because some may want to do part-time because they have another job, some may want to do fulltime. Gotcha. Yes, Mr. Arby. I do think that's something else that the board will have to consider if we start getting our own bus drivers is how does the board view that position? Are we viewing it as a part-time position? I know Mr. suggested that, you know, people that drive buses could like cut lawns or whatever, but it is a hard job to fill the in between time. So then the board would have to decide, do we consider it a more of a full-time position and provide benefits? And if we do, what kind of salary is expected? Well, but I mean,
152those are things we we have to talk about because if we're going to start employing bus drivers, you got to be able to answer that question. Is it full-time? Is it part-time? Are there benefits? Are there not? Generally, yes. It'd have to It couldn't be a salary position. There's going to be a lot of a lot of questions to be answered if we go down that road. Ask him if he could put together small. Yeah, but you have to know what you're budgeting. Full-time, part-time, benefits, no benefits. You have to You have to You want to make that? I mean, I don't want to make that. How many hours? This is an insurance, right? How does he put together a budget though if you don't know where you're sitting? Because a $70,000 a year job
153versus a $35,000 a year part-time job are two big differences when it comes to a budget. Providing insurance and not plays a huge role in the budget. So, if you're going to look at how much something's going to cost you, you have to know how you're looking at it. Unless we want to ask him to price it as a part-time and price it as a full-time. Anybody else? Yes, Mr. I think the last thing I'd bring up, this is not just something we have to be prepared to discuss as a school board. I know I've been asked by Commissioner I'm trying to think of unhealth asked me and I know that Dr. Martin got asked on the floor of well did you get asked on budget directly what is our backup plan for contractors and
154so we need to formally have some type of backup plan because we are being asked by our funding body and what our commissioners watch our meetings and our discussions and our decisions are watched by our funding body and noticed misswell. Yes, M. Can we take a recess? Yes, let's take a five minute recess, please. Be great. Okay. We are back. All right. Next, we have CT culinary arts gas line and equipment upgrade for Smyrna High School. CT department's proposing installation of a natural gas line to service culinary arts commercial kitchen renovation. The project will also include upgrading the current electrical appliances natural gas appliances. Funding for this project is the innovative school model grant and is expected to be 65,000. Engineering construction has read the request and has no objection. Any questions or comments? Okay,
155next number three. Mr. Reed, do you want to hit on this one? Because I don't know about this one. As the board will remember, there was been some discussion about Smyrna, some property next to SPA High School being developed for a shopping center, which will be anchored by Kroger. Um so the um developer who's with us tonight we have road Seager and then he has his traffic engineering engineer with him as well for the project here for to answer any questions they have. But in regards to the development adjacent to the school site, there's some improvements that has to take place to the road and the ingress and eress points on Bulldog Drive and to get access across the school property back um to another part of the campus. They've agreed to pay for all
156those costs at their expense. um they're paying for all the engineering construction work and we get all that work done. So there's no cost to the school board at all in regards to it, but they do need to have a construction easement, a temporary construction easement to come onto our property in order to do that work. So there's kind of two components to this. Um you've got the temporary construction easement component which I did make a number of changes to what they proposed and they have incorporated those changes into the agreement. So I'm as an attorney is agree. I think the agreement is fine to be signed at this point. There was also the additional land that we had many years ago I drafted the option us to buy for basic basis of $100 if
157it became available for that 30 acres and the board as you remember several weeks ago voted to exercise the option to purchase that 30 acres. So that has been communicated to developer. They've agreed to honor that option agreement and they said two things in regards to it. they do want to treat it as a donation. So they would like to for them for tax purposes which does not hurt us. So I don't think that's a problem from our standpoint. And secondly, they'd like to wait one year after the um transaction is done before they convey the property to us for again for tax reasons. So and there's no immediate need the school system has for that 30 acres. That doesn't really hurt us. they are doing the work on the road to help us with
158respect to the ingress and eress points to it and with the new roads that we need across the campus. Um so I think both the agreements are in order and appropriate. They are here to the extent anyone has questions for the developer. They're here tonight. They have their traffic engineer here tonight. They also have their project engineer here tonight. Bless your heart. You've been here all night. Uh Mr. Vaude. Oh, I'm not going to let him sit over there either because I'm going to ask him some questions. Uh, the traffic engineer really is the if he doesn't mind coming up and addressing this and Dre, I'm sure they they've coordinated with you on the site plan and all that kind of stuff, right? Um, as you're walking up, sir, um, thank you again. Thank you
159for coming. But my my only concern is and I think it's a good joint. I think the improvements you're going to make to the entrance and exit there uh is going to improve the entire site both for the the the tenant of the shopping center and the school. But in designing the new entrance into the campus, u what numbers did you use numbers? It it it appears to me on that site plan that the the the entrance coming into the high school now is more narrow. Is it still going to be Is it not Trey? Am I looking at it wrong? Are you talking about just entering our property? Yeah. Where they're moving the entrance down to the halfway down the parking lot to come into the school. It is designed for oneway traffic. So,
160not an in and an out. It's designed for in only. Okay. Okay. And it will be set up with signages for bus entrance. And that is the bus. The the next uh cut that they show above that entrance will be an in and an out further back toward the stadium. Yes. There's two shown. Okay. One is basically for bus. We're trying to best we can with this site get buses in one place and cars in another. I knew you had said that. I was just curious about what traffic numbers that is the intent is to for buses only. Now once you get past start of the day and the end of the day whether people use it it it will still be one way right but vehicular traffic can access it but we would it
161would be buses only. I think my biggest concern was since we've gone from a what 1,800 2,000 student campus to 2500 did they take that into account in in all their designs? We did as far as the uh the additional students in the school. Uh we did and we also looked at uh where people were parking now because uh during the construction project a lot of the uh students were parking on the east side of the school and and uh so now that that construction's done uh you know that that can go kind of back to the way it was. Uh but as as mentioned uh that the idea would be uh to circulate the buses uh entry there by uh what we tried to do was you know the the frontage road that's named
162Mc MC Williams Drive u it was noted as a as a problem by the city in terms of traffic and also when we met with T DOT uh they wanted uh if at all possible to close that access off and then we worked with Trey and this is what uh between the civil engineer and us uh that we were able to work out in terms of dealing with the bus and thank you for staying and answering that question that was on we we've gone to using all 90 passenger buses and they're pretty good size and you know just making sure that they could enter accordingly. So thank you. You're welcome, Miss Sharp. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, thank y'all for hanging out. Um, and going along with this, it's 8 o'clock now. Uh, and I
163mean this as respectfully as I can, but the parents and the constituents and the teachers and the principal at Smyrna High School do not want this project over there. There's already too much. It's a safety issue. There's already too many people on that campus. And with Kroger coming in, it's going to make more people over there. I know the the cow's kind of out of barn on this a little bit. Um, but just so publicly, you know, they they don't they don't want it there. They don't want the Kroger's over there. Yes, Mr. Rosales. Sorry about that. Um, yeah, it's been a long night. I'm so sorry. It's 8:00. Um so the property that we were given the option to purchase but now it's been uh requested to be allowed to have it classified as
164a donation for tax purposes. How much is how much acre acres are we talking about? It's the same acreage. So it's 30 acres that we know that will be donated and that's the same option the property we have option to p to purchase for $100. Acreage is no different. But they're coming to us now saying that they're willing to donate it to us. They're confirming that we've exercised the option. They're recognizing we do have the right to to exercise the option to acquire the property. They're agreeing to honor the option because they will be the buyer of the entire tract. So right now when we uh did the option many years ago, there's a different owner back then. So they're acknowledging that we will they will honor the option agreement that's there. uh they've asked
165us to do two things which they would like to have it treated as a donation on their from their standpoint. This does not financially hurt the school system at all. So that's fine and um also they want to there for a period be a period of one year before the donation's actually made. Um and we have no immediate issue use for the property today. It would take a year probably figure out what we're going to do with it anyway. So that does not really hurt us either. So, um, so it does not look like that negatively affects us in any way. Okay. Thank you, Miss Max. You know, Kroger Kroger's always been a good neighbor. Um, where have they been and I I don't have any reservations. You know, I would uh strongly believe they
166going to continue on. Miss Maxwell. Yes, Miss Rosales. Full disclosure, I worked for Kroger and I know before um and one thing that Kroger is good about is becoming a neighboring partner. This store could be a neighbor partner specific to Smyrna. Um I know that when I worked for Kroger, they did a lot of that. Community partners. Yes, Miss Jordan. This this is not against Kroger. It's about the the companies that the people that will be coming on that piece of property that wouldn't otherwise have any other reason to be there. Uh it's going to bring people from all over. It's just like the dump being on our school property. It brings other people there. It It's nothing against Kroger at all. Uh please, but the traffic and everything over there, it's already horrendous. It's
167already horrendous. I've spoken with Dr. Southerntherland. I've spoken with the APS and this is going to give an opportunity for other people to be on that property who should not be on that property. Has nothing to do with Kroger. But you don't think it'd be any different than the people that were on there when they were doing the construction, do you? Would they be the same people? Okay. Yes, Mr. Vault, did you want to say something? Okay, you look like you had something to say. Okay, if not, we'll move on to number 11. Number 11 is the board has seen many of these come through. So, this is the next one. MTSU seeks to be a Riverdale High School sponsor. MTSU proposes a contract in which MTSU may sponsor activities and place advertising at Riverdale
168High School. MTSU requests permission to place signage, which is detailed in the contract attachment. A MTSU proposes to pay 5,000 per year for five years. The contract terms are September 1st, 2025 through August 29th, 2029. Questions? Done this numerous times. It's a really good thing that they do for all of our schools. You know, ZCU given the same deal to every high school. Good. They need to. Yeah. Yeah. Number 12. Number 12. Um, bus contract. So, a couple things. Um, first we had a question about RFP. Mr. Reid too, if you had anything to add this, I want to talk about the RFP first. So, sent a letter of board action to Mayor Carr and to chairman Dodd because there's question about where the action needs to take place. So, um, received a response that
169risk management will be instructed to begin writing the RFP. It is also I've asked it to be on the health and ed agenda. Again, I don't know what the correct mechanism is. Usually board actions go to health and ed, but this is a department underneath the mayor's office. So, covering both grounds just in case. Um, so just know that that has occurred. And then we have our our bus contract. The current contracts for bus service expire June 30th, 2025. The board needs to approve a new bus contract to be in effect July 1st, 2025. Board's been in discussion. As you all know, a bus contractor since January regarding terms for the new contract, a number of suggestions from the bus contractor association, multiple other bus contractors have been incorporated into this contract. The board acted
170as last meeting do a 17% increase of the bus and mileage rates and provide 4,000 amount per bus from the contractors to obtain liability insurance. Terms of the contract itself need to be approved by the board. This will enable the transportation department to get in the process of getting contracts executed. enable the contractors to make arrangements for liability and in service insurance draft contract is included in the board materials. And as we already talked about, I think the May 29th deadline is great for us to be able to get the insurance portion moving because that helps us be able to tell the courthouse who to do checks for because they do have their last commission meeting, June 23rd, and checks will be cut off pretty closely around that date. Um, so I know that we
171have multiple payrolls that run in June. That seems like a great idea. Yes, Mr. St. Dr. Sullivan, would you please include in there the 17 and then the two and a half%? Oh, yeah. Yep. In the wording of the motion and that Yep. Got it. M. Maxwell. Yes. Mr. Tid, I have a question. I don't know if this is for Reed or Dr. Sullivan. Um but uh a couple things. One, do we know or actually maybe for Lee for this first question. Uh do we know when the routes will be set? You know, for instance, I know there's a lot of changes that are going to happen with the elementary resone or the high school editions when they open up at Oakland Riverdale. When will those routes kind of be set in place? We typically
172try and have them by the middle of July so that they have time to run them, write them, check them out, make sure, you know, see where they're going. Um, we will do our best to do the same this year because the first it's August 8th, so we've got to typically we try and get that done so that they've got at least a couple weeks before we start there. Again, it's why we're running out of time. Makes sense. Um, all right. And the other thing is I had asked uh Mr. Reid about this. I'd asked that the wording in the contract that if the county to get the insurance worked out that there would be an op option or the board if an agreement with the contractors um could revisit them joining the county insurance.
173I know this has been an ongoing thing. There's been the I feel like the board has done their part and there's been a lot of um I don't know about I don't what the correct word is to use there as far as communication uh communicating that over. I appreciate Dr. Sullivan getting that out to both sides. Uh but with that in mind, does there need to be wording inside to ensure because I think I'd mentioned it when we had talked at the last meeting that I would like to I'd like for there to be an option that if they can go back out on the county insurance when the RFP does get sent out, which I'm told that it is going to get sent out, that if we get that back in September and August,
174which it will likely be higher because it's not connected to the whole county government insurance, but when it comes back, if it is still low, more than what we're paying the stipens and we decide to go back to that route that that is an option for one and that if there are any savings between there however be maybe less than what they would have been tied to the county insurance that those savings would be split between the contractors and the county. So, I just want to see is is that in the contract or the language in the contract provides for the the option basically in the event the county is able to get insurance and on the bus contractors and this board agrees to do it because you don't know what that cost will be
175until it comes back to the board. So, you're not obligating yourself to do it now because you don't know what the cost might be. But, it's a dangerous time to go out for RFP for a standalone bus contract insurance. So you're not I don't know how I don't know what the number is going to look like when it comes back. So what this contract does provide is that if we are able to provide the insurance and the board agrees to provide the insurance and you vote to do that they basically will come back and amend the contract to provide for that and that will be up to the bus contractors also agree to it. So they may prefer to keep their own some I don't know but if they don't and they want to be
176on the county's insurance at that point that option will be made made available to them at that point if the board that's when you would say this is what the cost savings are if there are any cost savings. So we will be um you know adjusting the rates accordingly at that point. You won't know how to adjust the rates though until you get to the point of knowing what those costs are going to be for the new insurance program. So, this does not have that specific language in here because it really is going to take board action to know whether you're going to do insurance or not later on and you won't know what those costs are going to be until you it comes back to the but the option the option is here and
177that's the way this is set up to occur and that's what that's the path I think we're all marching forward on. So, with the understanding that we don't know how what the results will be from an RFP, but we will certainly issue one and do our best to get the best pricing we can in the insurance industry out there. Yeah. And I think we covered that last time talking about how just from a construction standpoint, you know, you you take in more stuff. So, if it's more liability with the bus contractors, uh, when you did the whole county insurance bid, since it wasn't connected to the whole bid, there might be less people interested in in looking into it. And I understand all those factors. So it may come back higher. But I just wanted
178to make sure we had the option. You do. Yes. What page is that on? And Madam Chair, may I ask another question? Yes. Thank you. Can you find it? No, I was going to ask another question while you're looking for it. Um, are we signing the contracts before the routes are assigned? Yes, that's typical. If we don't reszone, they typically get the same route as they had the year before, but when you reszone, they they are guaranteed a route. They are not guaranteed a particular route. We but we do historically have tried to accommodate and keep them in the same locations as much as possible. M sharp to answer your question on the bottom page four under subsection F. It says notwithstanding the above if applicable law allows the board to provide liability insurance coverage
179for contractors. The Rutherford County Risk Management Office can obtain insurance coverage acceptable in terms agreeable by the board of education and the board of education elects to do so in writing. The obligations under the section 13 can be amended by written mutual agreement with the contractor. So that's the bottom of page four and goes to top of page five. Thank you, Miss Maxwell. Yes, Mr. Rosales. I have a question. In the event that um worst case scenario is that the insurance is not picked up by the county at all um and let's say a bus contractor were to sign the contract and they don't want to continue with the service because of the insurance on year two. Is there what can they just walk away turn in the route? I mean how does that happen?
180They just turn in the route. Okay. I do have language we added the contract. So, if in the event the board pays the $4,000 to someone for the stipen and then they decide halfway during the year they want to quit or not run the route anymore, they do have an obligation to refund a prora portion of that premium back to the board. They have the obligation to refund back. Yeah. The prorita portion for the unused portion of the year. Dr. sold. And that'll be a requirement for auditing purposes because if that's not returned, then we'll have legal obligations um to meet auditing requirements because we're paying for services upfront in a different fiscal year. That was a big caveat to get through our I have department. Yeah, I have one more question, but Trey Lee,
181you said that for them to sign a contract, they have to have an insurance and driver at the time that they sign the contract, right? Yes, they have to provide those types of things to us every year. So there's Let me ask your question. At the time the contract signed, you won't have insurance in place then. They'd have to place by July 1st. Oh, okay. Because they need a contract before they probably can get the insurance. So they have to have insurance in place by July 1st. Do they have to have a driver by July 1st as well? They'll have to have they'll have to give it there's stipulations in the contract on when they have to give us drivers buses and a time frame when they're supposed to do all that. Well, because there's
182been this date thrown around May 29th if there's a that's to sign a contract. May 29th is is to for you guys to approve a contract. That would be the deadline. That's the last that we can I think to make get checks cut. Let me clarify that board hopefully will approve on May 14th so that they would have till May 29th to sign to get insurance so that we can make a decision last case about getting buses for our own use. And I would this is the first time we've done this. So it may take them a couple weeks to get insurance because I'm sure their insurance agent whichever one they choose to go to is going to have a questionnaire for them to fill out and paperwork to fill out. So it would not
183be a situation they just call and they get insurance in place by the next day. So it will be a couple week process before they get their insurance issued. That's why it's important the board to go ahead and if we're going to go this route with it and there's no other option for insurance. We want there's no other mechanism the county is going to have in place by the time school starts for insurance for the contractors. So there the contractors need to bank on and count on getting own insurance at this point. If we can get RFP and something happens during the course of the year that we can get it covered in the county, that's fine. But we can't guarantee that and they need to go in and get their insurance in place if
184they want to operate for us next school year. And because of that process, which may be take a week's worth of paperwork with them and the agent, they need to be able to get started on that soon. So they'll have their insurance certificate in place by July 1 or before then when Trey Lee's office would need it. So there's a good possibility that we can know a lot of these bus drivers will be signing by renewing the contract by May 29th. You think that's up assuming the board votes on this contract Thursday reality or yeah that's what we're going to request to get insurance payments. We don't know if there's no way that we can bay it out. Any other questions? Yes, Mr. Vot. All right. Y'all going to hate me for this, but I'm
185going to bring it up anyway. um and and kind of blame the $4,000 on me because I kept going back. I felt like for the taxpayers's benefit, county commission's benefit, our benefit, the driver contractor's benefit, everybody needed to identify that was a new cost expenditure. We could have simply given the contractors what a 20% pay increase and said, "Hey, go figure out your insurance yourself." But I kept thinking that if there was the possibility after talking to the association, there's this possibility out there that the county could furnish the insurance. So, that's the reason I think we get a little maybe sideways talking about that. I'm going to bring something up here and y'all may not like it. I got to doing a little thinking over the weekend that there's basically 40 or 50 buses,
186backup buses, I'm thinking. And you know that cost expenditure is about 160,000 somewhere between 160 and $200,000. from a lot of the group I have talked to in the last 3 weeks, two to three weeks, their insurance number is coming in higher than this 4,000. It's closer to 4500, 4600, 4,800. Depends on who you talk to. I talked to one gentleman today. His was 5,500. I'm going to bring this up for point of discussion right now. We could not cover if you wanted to, and this would be a budget neutral kind of thing, we could not cover the backup buses and increase this amount to $4500 per contract. Uh, I know I'm that's throwing everybody a curveball right now, but I got to looking at it from a budget neutral standpoint that we I think
187there's kind of an honor agreement now with the budget office and the finance office or finance budget and finance committee and the health NED committee. Hey, this is where we're heading. Here's what we think we want to do. You know, this is the 11th hour right here for me to throw you a curveball, but I just thought I I'm going to bring it up for discussion. You repeat it one more time. Do what? One more time. Tell you what I'm thinking. It's late at night for me to be bringing this up in if my understanding is correct. There's somewhere between 40 and 50. And I'm looking at Trey and I don't cuz I think this was the number he and I thought there was 40 and between 40 and 50 buses that had been inspected
188by the state this year that were used as backup buses. Some contractors have two or three. If they've got eight or 10 buses, 15 buses, they've got four or five maybe. Some contractors don't have a backup bus. you know, why are we covering their backup bus but not giving them agree, you know, a single owner operator a stipen to increase and and so and and don't shoot don't shoot me over this, please, but but trying to be as equitable to everybody and looking at that number coming in 200,000 roughly. It's a it's a cost revenue. I mean, it's a it's a it's a costneutral to us or the county commission or the board, but it would put that $500 extra dollars in every contract uh as opposed to covering the backup buses, you know, and
189then they have to as business owners then they would have to make the decision. Do they want to cover those backup buses if they own one? if they if they don't own one, hey, they go lease one from Midsouth or somebody if their bus is down for an extended period of time. So then they would they would um that cost would be figured into that lease that lease payment or rent payment. I'm just throwing something out there. I don't know if that seems equitable or not. Don't see I don't know if it's fair or not. just thought before this is our first time to do this and I don't want to mess it up because I feel like going if if if we don't get the county insurance back this is the way it's going
190to be for the next 20 years. Yes, sir. I think if we're doing 342 buses, I think you could do 550 $550. Y Oh, you're splitting hairs with me right there, buddy. I was just trying to make the 200,000 match. That's what I was trying to do. Hey, I'm good with it. I'm sure. be good with it, too. Does anybody follow my logic at all? We could put that back in maintenance. No, no, no. We're going We're either going to cover backup buses or we're going to put it in the insurance line item. Don't Don't do that to me. I just took 50 buses at 4,200,550 at 342 routes or buses times your 10. It gets to 188 to 100. That's the maximum. any comments from any of the six of y'all? Yeah, I mean
191it's interesting idea. I like the fact that it's, you know, nearly budget neutral. Uh I think the issue that I would want to consider in that is that they these backup buses are actually getting used. Um so they it's almost like even though they are cons technically backup buses, they're loaning and out. Somebody may a contractor that may not be able to run up and go lease a bus can call up one of these larger bus contractors and just say, "Hey, can I grab that bus today?" So, it's doing kind of a service even still. I bet if we looked at I don't know what how you'd gauge this, but if you looked at the amount of days those buses were used, they're probably getting used quite a lot. So, I'm okay with still covering
192those buses because they're going to we're going to need them on the road anyways. I guess my fear would be I don't know how many buses are open for lease, but if they had like five or 10 or something like that and you had a day where you had 15 buses, then they'd all be we'd have five routes short that day. That's good thought though. I mean, um I think I'm still where I'm at, but I like the talk. Mr. on. Yeah. If I guess for clarification, if if I own a bus and I can't run my main bus today, but I use a backup bus, will that insurance cover that backup bus? You got to have it on each each bus. You got to have a policy on each bus. Each bus. Okay. Yes,
193Mr. Darby. I think it'd be interesting to find out. And I don't know because I didn't have actual buses, but a lot of times, similar to regular auto insurance, the more cars you have, the less expensive it becomes per bus. I don't know if it works that way in the school bus world, but it would be interesting to find out because when you're talking about trying to have it fair across the board, it would it would kind of make it more fair in that sense because those with more buses might actually be paying less per bus versus a single independent contractor. So, I'd be interested to find out from the insurance agencies what that looks like. Yes, Mr. Bot. I'll I'll answer it to the knowledge that I have. Yes. In home in in auto
194owners insurance for me and you because the odds are, you know, if I've got a truck, a car and a Jeep, I'm just driving one with common carriers. I think that's terminology. Common carriers over the road trucks, buses. It go It actually goes up. It actually goes up. Well, that would be another thing to look at. [Music] Mel, Mr. Ross, um I understand um Mr. Stan's point um as a way of trying to save money, but at the same time, um those buses can be used at any given time, right? So, at the end of day, they would still need required insurance because, god forbid if there was a bus out there that didn't have insurance. That's that's a huge risk in my opinion. I mean, I don't think that will happen, but it would
195still need insurance. Mr. Tidwell, Mr. Reed, I got a question. I think and and maybe Stan can answer this too. it would y might have worked on this, but um when at the beginning when you were coming up with this $4,000 number, you had gotten quotes and I mean is it fair to say that the quote was that you received back the $4,000 was going to cover from the quotes that you got? It was going to cover. Uh correct. I think um there was um yes I think 4,000 already covered most bus contractors cost if you have a new bus a 2025 bus which is a more expensive bus and or maybe a 24 but I've seen the cost come in for 25 buses and those have been the higher cost and they've been $4500
196$4600 is what I've seen come in um on since the board has acted with respect to the whole bus issue where people are going out and getting quotes on insurance. So, I've seen their actual quotes come in and for new buses, say 2025 models, they're coming in at 25 $2,600 level. So, older buses are a bit lower than that. So is the variance that apparently wad variance is that got to do with driving record or I think age of buses, the cost of bus is how much you're insuring because you know of course to ensure a $180,000 bus is going to be more than insuring a $100,000 bus. Any other questions? It's just a thought. Don't you don't you quite a thought. Okay, we can move on to 13 transportation and this is just our
197summer bus summer camp bus contract. What I just want the or to be aware of and what my concern is is that we're going to have summer bus routes running uh we get into this whole we're going to park our bus situation. I just I hate to mention but I have to mention it out there because this is third grade retention and I don't want kids potentially being held back because of that that issue out there. So this is the bus contract for 2025 for summer camp um for y'all to vote on so that we can then draw routes. So that's that's just a concern that I think has to be mentioned that that is the month of June, right? Correct. Does not go in it does not it's June. So or it's enough that
198it's been mentioned not just as a something that we've gotten questions about. Okay. 14 financial report. We We're good. Yep. Yep. We did. Director's update. Um only thing I'll add is that we're getting we're about to we've had some questions from parents who I think have watched what's happened in the college football world with NIL and onetime transfers and believe that that applies to high school as well and it does not. And so they think just because one-time transfers are allowed, you still have to have open seats. And so if open seats aren't available and published like we did our lottery already, then student can be in great standing at school A, but if they didn't apply for a choice seat and got in through the lottery, then they cannot go to school B unless
199they have a bonafide change of residence. And so that is uh something that we're going to hear a lot about. Um because we started hearing rumblings already from coaches who weren't letting they were worried about letting kids participate in spring practice because they were worried that kids were transferring to rivals and you're not we're hate that we're there but that's we're there and so where's it going to be? You have to have a bonafide change of residence to be able to move. Yeah. I got I got several calls and I had to be the bearer of bad news. I talked to Greg Wyant who is our TWWSA. We're not under, you know, the college and IO. We have our own specific rules with TWSA while we still have TWSAA. And uh if the school is
200overcrowded, you can't. Now, we do run into that whenever they have the the social, the mental, and all that that we're going to have to work through, but we're not going to throw that into the world yet until TWSA puts that protocol into place. So, that could be a gap. Okay. Next, we have Do you have anything, Mr. VA? under the Tennessee. [Laughter] We have nothing this month. That's what my notification was from the Okay. Tennessee Legislative Network. We've all gone home. Do we have anything other in general discussion? Oh, goody. Okay, then. Mjourned. We are doued.