In its first meeting of the year Friday, the Lowndes County School District Board of Trustees appointed new officers, honored its top teachers and administrators, dropped ticket prices for all sports but football and accepted a bid for copy printing services that it expects to save the district between $20,000 and $32,000 per month.
Brian Clark was selected as board president, Wesley Barrett as vice president, Jane Kilgore as secretary, Jeff Smith as board attorney, Joey Henderson as architect, Tina Richards as 16th Section land appraiser and Gary Goodwin as disciplinary hearing officer.
While the board accepted the low bid from NovaCopy to provide copy and printing services for the district following an independent audit last month that identified where the district could save money by removing some copiers or moving copiers to other locations.
“What we found is that there were some copiers that were being used hardly at all and others that were being used quite a bit,” Superintendent Lynn Wright told board members. “The companies that bid on this based their bids on what the audit showed us, and we expect to save quite a bit of money by doing this.”
The board considered a proposal by board member Robert Barksdale to change the date and time of the board’s monthly meetings. Currently, the board meets at 11 a.m. On the second Friday of each month but holds three meetings a year at one of the district’s schools at 5:30 p.m.
Barksdale said poor attendance at those campus meetings convinced him there was little community interest in those meetings. He proposed that the board meet at 12:30 p.m. on the second Friday of the month for all of its meetings in 2018.
Board member Jacqueline Gray disagreed.
“There is interest,” she said. “There may not be at every school, but there is interest from the community that we’ve seen at some of the meetings. It’s only three meetings a year. I think it’s better to give the community that opportunity.”
The board tabled Barksdale’s motion until the next meeting, scheduled for Feb. 9.
The board did pass a proposal to lower ticket prices on all sports other than football from $7 to $5 for adults and $3 for students. There was currently no discounted ticket price for students.
“The idea is promote better attendance,” Barksdale said. “The reason we don’t include football is, first, attendance at football isn’t a problem, and second, there are only five home football games a year. But for other sports that play once or twice at week at home, we think lowering the ticket price will help. That’s the whole idea.”
The board also honored its Teacher of the Year, Administrator of the Year and Assistant Teachers of the Year and Administrator of the Year. History teacher James Reed of Caledonia High School was chosen Teacher of the Year. Christy Adams, principal at New Hope High School, was chosen as Administrator of the year. Corina Lytle of Caledonia Elementary, Christiana Guerrero of New Hope Elementary, Gloria Shinn of New Hope Middle and Willie Dean Parsons of West Lowndes Elementary were honored as Assistant Teachers of the Year.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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