Christian County school board members voted Thursday night to declare a state of emergency to speed up the process to make repairs to facilities damaged in Saturday’s severe storm.
Chief Operations Officer Brad Hawkins said a lot of the damage at Christian County High School was to the roof.
A portion of the roof at the Maintenance Department/bus garage was also torn off, which also caused damages to six maintenance vehicles, a school van, and several buses.
Hawkins added the estimated cost to replace the roof is $107,000. He noted there was also a lot of water damage to the inside of the building.
In addition, the roof was blown off of dugouts on the softball and baseball fields.
He explained declaring a state of emergency would help speed up the process.
A representative of the Kentucky Association of School Administrators Superintendent Search and Selection Service, Phil Eason presented the timeline and guide to appointing a new superintendent by April 1st. He said the search and selection process would take two or three months and the screening committee will consist of six members – a board member two teachers, a classified employee, a principal, and a parent.
Eason asked each board member to write down and give him eight to ten position criteria that will be given to the committee to screen applicants. After the committee screens the applications, they will make a recommendation of three to five applicants to the board. The board will then conduct interviews and select a superintendent.
Eason also provided a guide, gave the board some best practices in the selection process and other vital information in the superintendent search.
Superintendent Mary Ann Gemmill and Director of Business Jessica Darnell gave an update of the draft budget for fiscal year 2020-2021. Due to Senate Bill 1, Gemmill noted there are two major unfunded cost drivers – facilities and personnel.
Gemmill said the district had to incur $160,000 for facilities to ensure school and student safety. This includes safety measures at each school that includes the main entrances, electronically locking the doors, cameras and more.
Senate Bill 1 also mandates a school resource officer at every school and a school counselor for every 250 students in the school district. Gemmill said that means they will need to hire seven additional officers and nine counselors at an unfunded cost of over $1 million.
She noted another bill to be presented to the state legislature would allow them to use the district’s contracted services with Pennyroyal Mental Health Center, which would help offset the costs with the nine additional counselors.
Gemmill said another additional cost will be hiring personnel to help students with the new graduation requirements that they haven’t fully worked through yet.
Darnell presented the draft budget which included a reduction in SEEK funding, a step increase of over $641,000 and other expenses. She stated after the meeting the draft budget is about $90 million.
Darnell and Gemmill noted the tentative budget could change because there are a lot of unknown factors at this time due to a new governor, his budget and changes from legislators.
And Christian County Fiscal Court magistrate Rich Liebe presented board members with a proclamation for School Board Recognition Month on behalf of Mayor Carter Hendricks and Judge-Executive Steve Tribble.
The board will meet again for a special meeting/workshop on Thursday night, February 6, at 6:00 in the Board Room at the Central Office.
