School Board Opposes Central Financial System

KEITH READY, Courier Contributor


The Cannon County Board Of Education met for their regular monthly meeting. All members of the board were present except for Shannon Davenport.

Barbara Parker, Cannon County Director of Schools recognized the recent county spelling bee winners. Lauren Underwood a 5th grader from East SideSchool finished first and Bailey Nemeth an 8th grader from Woodland School took second place.

The Board approved the consent agenda which consisted of the approval of the Ricoh Aficio Copy machine lease for the East Side School, the textbook recommendations by the textbook adoptions committee were approved. The staff development committee was approved as was the approval of the 2012 Jr. Lions football schedule.

Eastside Prinicipal Karen King addressed the Board about some summer projects she is wanting to do forEast SideSchool. The wish list included an awning that would be for rain dismissal, paving the track, a new entry awning and changing the front landscaping. King requested the School Board appropriate $2,000 toward the paving project.

Chairman Randy Gannon said that he would rather see the $2,000 go toward the awnings and made the motion to do so. Chris Blackburn seconded the motion and the motion passed.

The Board gave the approval for King to seek a grant in the amount of $5,000 from General Mills to be used for paving the track at the School.

The approval of the architecture firm Smee-Busby and survey proposal for the Ag Pavillion project at Cannon County High School was tabled until the May meeting.

The Board approved the removal of the glass basketball backboards at the Veterans Memorial Gym. The boards will replace the side basketball goals wooden backboards at the high school. Those wooden backboards will then be placed on the basketball goals at the Veterans Gym. This project will be done at no costs to the system.

Jason Campbell from TVA introduced the Board to the TVA Demand Response Program. The school can earn some extra revenue by curtailing air conditioning for up to 40 hours per year. The average hours over the last three years statewide is 22 hours. Essentially it's an on-demand curtailment. Most of the hours that the program runs is after school hours.

In order to qualify for the program it has to be a fairly large school that has enough energy consumption to curtail without having adverse effects. Cannon County High School and Woodbury Grammar School were the two that qualified. The program is an emergency type program that works off of peak hours The normal peaks are from 2-6 in the afternoon some peaks will start earlier however. Once these peak hours are established under the emergency program the two schools will cut back on energy which means areas of the particular schools will turn up the air conditioner to conserve energy. The system is optional and schools can opt to participate at the they are called upon.

The schools will be able to monitor their participation as well as have the ability to see where in the schools the most energy is being used. The agreement is on a three year basis and was approved by the board. Board member Mike Mayfield voted not to approve the motion.

The Board gave the approval of bonuses for qualified non-certified employees. Under the bonus plan, all of the qualified non certified employees will receive a $200 bonus. The total expense will be $17,580.00. Federal Expenses into this would make the total $27,893.60

Director of Schools Barbara Parker said this month the system had to decide on the evaluation model for teachers. It was decided to stay with the Team Model that the State of Tennessee also uses.

Cannon County Schools received an energy grant allocation of $48,000 from the State Education Department about a year ago. May 1st is the deadline for school systems to claim their money. The project that the money will go toward is the HVAC system at Woodbury Grammar.

Parker stated that she'd like to get started on another project which is the high school HVAC project in the gym. Parker wanted to use Smee-Busby as the architect for the project. The Board gave approval.

To close out the meeting the Board of Education made a unanimous statement that they were against the school's participation in the possible Centralized Accounting System that the County is looking to adopt.

The next meeting will be Thursday, May 10th at Woodbury Grammar School.