[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[1:34] Thank you for all being here this evening for our regularly scheduled regular board meeting for February 7th, 2023 for the Murray County School Board.
[1:45] This time we'll go ahead and call the meeting to order and I'll ask Ms. Kinzer if you would call the roll.
[1:52] I'll be happy to do that. I have a question. We all absolutely love these and would love to thank the school that brought them.
[1:59] And we've gone through all of them and precious that they are, we don't know what school to play.
[2:06] So, if any of you are, any of you teachers are watching, we absolutely love them, and thank you very much.
[2:11] Thank you.
[2:13] Our mission.
[2:14] Present.
[2:15] Ms. Kinzer's here.
[2:17] Ms. Brown's not here, Mr. Fulbright.
[2:19] Ms. Nett.
[2:20] Ms. Arwin.
[2:22] Mr. Sam.
[2:23] Mr. Hipper.
[2:24] Mr. McGee.
[2:26] Mr. Lindsey.
[2:27] Mr. Carter.
[2:28] Yes.
[2:31] Thank you very much.
[2:33] Is there anyone from Battle Creek Elementary School here with us this evening?
[2:37] If not, then we'll go ahead and join together with the pledge of allegiance followed by a moment of silence for prayer and reflection.
[2:43] If you would rise.
[3:18] Thank you very much.
[3:24] A couple things I'd like to mention before we get started.
[3:27] I know we've got a couple of folks with leadership Murray here tonight that are observing the meeting.
[3:31] So we'll try to put on our best face for you this evening.
[3:34] And I believe, Michelle, you had something you wanted to mention.
[3:39] Yeah, sure did.
[3:39] I wanted to take a minute and just say thank you to the All-Marie County Band that performed
[3:45] this past Friday.
[3:46] We have received an invitation to go to that and the students worked really hard on that performance.
[3:52] And it was just amazing to go to and to see it.
[3:55] So it was all.
[3:56] It was the middle school and it was from all the different schools within the county to
[4:00] students and we're brought in and they performed an incredible day and so they worked really hard
[4:07] Thursday and then came and spent all day long on Friday. So from early that morning,
[4:14] eight o'clock until six o'clock practicing. So endurance is something they learned that day.
[4:20] They were sore. They retired and worn out and pushed through and the performance was just amazing.
[4:26] So congratulations to them y'all did an amazing job and it was really appreciated. Thank you very much for sharing that
[4:34] All right moving on we need to adopt our agenda hopefully you've got a chance to look through it and see what we have here
[4:40] I'll accept a motion from Mr. Carter seconded by Mr. Hooper
[4:45] Any discussion on the approval of the agenda
[4:49] Seeing none I believe we're ready to vote
[5:04] Okay, our agenda passage unanimously the next item on our agenda is our consent agenda
[5:11] You see that it runs through 3.1 all the way down to 3.319.
[5:25] Is there any discussion or any items that need to be discussed from the consent agenda?
[5:30] If not, I'll accept a motion to approve.
[5:34] Motion from Ms. Kinzer, second from Ms. Schill.
[5:41] We're ready to vote.
[5:54] Consent agenda passes unanimously.
[5:57] moving on to item 3.4 other business.
[6:04] Let us ensure take this, I think this is something we've discussed in the past and our meetings, but we have something for another.
[6:11] Good evening, and I will ask Mr. Willover to jump in here at any time he feels necessary.
[6:17] This is the MOU that we have worked with the City of Columbia to return our EA Cox fields and surrounding land.
[6:25] Back to us, I think some of you will recall that when I first took this position, you know, this was a conversation that I kind of jumped into.
[6:36] So we've worked really hard with the city and the city has graciously agreed to return all of our land less seven acres.
[6:45] The 3.5 that the fire hall currently is on and 3.5 for future use for probably either a police precinct or an ambulance bay.
[6:59] Okay, I'll take a motion and second, then we can have discussion.
[7:03] Second, I mean, motion from Mr. Lindsay. Second, for Mr. Sims.
[7:08] I'll open the floor up for any discussion.
[7:13] Well, I have one.
[7:14] Um, we had it one time talked about asking for some money for some funds to help her
[7:20] coop.
[7:21] Some of the main that's on the field was that included in here, did that, is that something
[7:24] that didn't fly?
[7:28] We mentioned that.
[7:30] It's a possibility that was fairly quickly kicked back as a non-starter.
[7:37] Okay.
[7:40] Any other comments or questions?
[7:48] All right. Then I believe we're ready to vote.
[8:20] All right.
[8:20] That passes unanimously.
[8:25] Moving on to new business.
[8:28] The first item of new business is a very small budget amendment, when I came on board, we noticed
[8:40] that there was no line in the superintendent's budget for food supplies. This is a $1,500
[8:47] amendment, it's not exorbitant. However, my request would be if we have found this money in
[8:54] other areas. My request would be that you approve this. This is for things like, for example,
[9:01] when I hosted the state legislatures. You know, I had several senators and House of Representatives
[9:09] and several representatives and wanted to provide a meal for them. This also includes the teacher
[9:15] of the year banquet. It's actually also one of the budget amendments that you already approved,
[9:21] I believe is a check that came in a donation that someone had given us towards the teacher
[9:27] of the year banquet and we realized we really didn't have a line for this.
[9:33] Okay, I'll have a motion for Mr. Lindsey's second for Mr. Sam's. Any discussion?
[9:45] This does take care of the revenue plus expenditures, both sides of the ledger I guess.
[9:53] Okay. Seeing no lights, I believe we're ready to vote.
[10:10] Item 3.5.1 passes unanimously.
[10:15] Item 3.5.2. Grandstands, it's Spring Hill High School.
[10:20] And I have asked Dr. Pots, the principle of Spring Hill High School to be here. Should we have any additional questions?
[10:26] And I think Mr. Perryman and I can speak pretty eloquently about this.
[10:29] The grandstands at Spring Hill High School are the original grandstands for when the school was built.
[10:37] They are not in great shape. They are dangerous.
[10:41] And we would request that we take money from fund balance to replace these grandstands immediately.
[10:50] I have a motion from Mr. Carter.
[10:52] Second from Miss Kinzer.
[10:56] Any discussion, Miss Irvin?
[10:58] I just have a question, more or less, what is the time frame on this and how is it going
[11:03] to impact graduations as I know that's usually something that happens on that field?
[11:11] We will work around graduation, we've talked to them, sometimes they do graduation inside,
[11:15] sometimes they do it outside. If you remember we were replacing the bleachers inside as well,
[11:20] so either way we will work around them as far as the demolition of the current stadium, we brought
[11:28] to you tonight because with supply chain issues, we anticipate their first football game maybe
[11:34] being one to two days after this project is complete. So graduation should not be impacted in
[11:40] any way whatsoever.
[11:43] Thank you. I'll say that I know this was something that was discussed and
[11:47] kind of pushed off until we knew for certain what we were going to do with the Spring Hill High School
[11:51] Facility and now that that question's been answered as why it's coming up now. So you know
[11:57] other rights, I believe we're ready to vote.
[12:19] Okay, Adam 3.5.2 passes unanimously.
[12:23] Dr. Pots, you can start running up and down
[12:24] to stairs once we get a built in their safe.
[12:27] Thank you for being here tonight, though.
[12:30] This is something that's been very well needed for our county.
[12:36] Item 3.5.3, budget amendment for Spring Hill,
[12:41] Spring Hill High School Grandstands.
[12:44] Have a motion for Mr. Lindsay second from Mr.
[12:46] a quarter,
[12:53] and do you like to say Mr. Parammon?
[12:59] Demolition, construction, and then the support activities that would have to go around the
[13:03] putting up of those new fields, our bleachers.
[13:11] Okay. This is then for the budget amendment that gives along with what we just approved.
[13:17] Okay. Any discussion on this item? This provides the funds for the vote that we just
[13:24] unanimously passed.
[13:29] So, you know, I believe we're ready to vote.
[13:40] Okay, item 3.3.3.5, point 3 passes unanimously, I am 3.5.4 budget amendment regarding lobbying efforts.
[13:54] I believe I don't even know that this has come up in our discussions here in the full meeting, but this is something that, well,
[14:01] let me take a motion and a second and then we'll start discussing. Mr. Carter makes the motions.
[14:06] second from Michelle. Just to give you a little background of what this is, you hopefully
[14:13] already read this. But the county commission is looking to work with some surrounding
[14:24] counties to have legislation passed allowing counties to impose fees in the same way
[14:32] cities are able to impose fees designated for different things such as infrastructure, education,
[14:40] and whatever water systems. I think that's what the city of Columbia most recently did.
[14:46] Currently, counties don't have that power to institute those type of user fees.
[14:53] And this is a movement to hire a couple lobbyists. I believe this would be spearheaded by
[15:01] And for us to join with them, the county has already contributed, I've heard different amounts, but I believe 40,000, maybe 50,000 is the latest number.
[15:13] They're asking us to contribute 25,000 towards those efforts.
[15:20] And like I said, this is a conglomeration of several counties coming together, trying to get this past.
[15:26] a lot of the counties around Nashville are experiencing some of the same growth pains we are.
[15:32] So that's what's inspired this effort.
[15:36] So we have a motion in a second. I'll entertain any comments or questions.
[15:40] Miss Nutt.
[15:41] Yeah. So the commissioners already approved this.
[15:46] And it would be to pay for professional lobbyist.
[15:51] I kind of see this as my husband is the only one that voted against it because we do have a
[15:56] representative that's his responsibility to do, so I personally also feel that last meeting,
[16:05] I had brought up needing to do a strategic planning retreat and was told that there
[16:09] were that it would be roughly $30,000 and here's $25,000 we just found and I think that
[16:17] we could be better used towards something like that.
[16:21] Thank you very much, Miss Irvin.
[16:26] So I think we had briefly discussed and just want to see, have we talked to our commissioners
[16:33] or whomever about in this effort, this push for lobbying, should this come to be like,
[16:40] are we going to be guaranteed or is there going to be like a standing percentage that will come back to the schools?
[16:46] Or is it going to just go to the county at large?
[16:50] in all the time.
[16:52] You all had no your head.
[16:53] I'll let you talk.
[16:53] In the conversations that I've had with various commissioners and with Mayor But,
[17:00] there is no there is no promise of a percentage.
[17:04] There is no promise that this this money would be used for capital projects of which
[17:10] they realize with our population increase that that we would have several.
[17:17] I believe Jake and I have Mr. Oliver and I have that spoken and we would present this
[17:24] check with a letter basically saying our expectation would be, but I don't think we can
[17:31] legally bind them in any way to a percentage point.
[17:39] And I will continue to say that my personal stance on this as well.
[17:43] I definitely appreciate, you know, your position, Kristen and I agree. I also know a lot of our local...
[17:49] That's Laura. By the way, Laura. I'm sorry. I know. I was sorry. I'm so, so, so sorry. I've just, that's been that kind of day. But anyway,
[18:00] I know the benefit to our people of getting these impact fees. I mean, we've worried about tats and creases.
[18:07] It's a way to target the new growth which is continuing to happen and you know kind of take it off the you know the burden
[18:15] So I feel like it's needed I know which $25,000 but in hindsight, I think that's a drop in the bucket if we could get it
[18:24] And if we've got somebody that's dedicated to the calls that can you know execute it and get it done
[18:29] And I think it would be worth the investment that's my personal take on it
[18:33] Okay, thank you Mr. Carter
[18:34] I just want to kind of add to that and say that I've been fortunate enough to work with our representatives to pick you quite a bit throughout my time
[18:41] involved in this and other issues and he's just one man up there and he wants what's best for us
[18:47] And he's been working his tail off for this, but he alone just can't do this
[18:51] I mean that's one man fighting to say of 99
[18:53] So in that I think anything we can do to help that to help Murray County and yes, it's $25,000
[18:58] But we're over if not right about half of the county's budget
[19:02] So I think it is fair for us to contribute me about half of what they are to this effort because while we may not have a written guarantee
[19:09] It's gonna come back and help us eventually. So I think it's in the best interest of Marri County schools
[19:15] Mr. Lewinsey
[19:16] I'll concur with
[19:18] Mr. Jackson and and and to add to that not only we have their budget we're probably 98% of the dead that the county hooch
[19:29] So I think it
[19:31] The biggest cost that we as a society has right now are our construction of schools.
[19:40] As population increases, we're going to continue to have that need.
[19:47] And I think it's just the right thing for us to do at 25,000.
[19:53] When we look at the big picture, it's a drop in the book.
[19:57] It's something that we need to do.
[19:59] Okay. Thank you. I'll just want to add a couple things to some of the things I've heard.
[20:06] I think I said early on when I heard this that it was a good idea, but I wanted to have some sort of
[20:11] guarantee that the schools would get a fair shake and otherwise I wouldn't vote for it and I have not seen anything
[20:19] and writing. It memorandum of understanding I think would be what I would most likely expect from
[20:24] And even though that's not anything that's ironclad enforceable, it is a good faith measure.
[20:30] And I say that because the first time this came up, during the conversation I was
[20:36] having, it was said that this would go all towards schools.
[20:40] We have all that need.
[20:41] It's all go to schools.
[20:43] Well, the next conversation I had, it was a lot of it's going to go to schools.
[20:48] And I don't know if either of you went back and watched the planning meeting from the county
[20:51] commission, which was really well done and a lot of great ideas came from it. But I
[20:56] can't only five or six different things that this money was going to pay for
[21:01] on their plans. None of those were schools. And they had a lot of good plans and
[21:08] the county has a lot of strong needs. But without something as far as a
[21:13] memorandum of understanding, I can't contribute that kind of money to this. I
[21:19] Do you see that representatives of picky needs more than just himself fighting it?
[21:26] Obviously he tried it last time and it didn't go anywhere.
[21:30] It did pass in a Senate quite easily, but did not in the house.
[21:34] So I think this is to help him out a little bit.
[21:36] And I'm like Ms. Nuts said, as long as there's teachers that are having to buy supplies
[21:43] and scrape here and there, I'm not spending $25,000 for anything that I can't guarantee
[21:48] if what's going to happen at the end of it.
[21:51] So that's my soap box, listen up.
[21:53] Yeah, I just wanted to clarify, um,
[21:56] so everyone understands, they already approve this.
[21:58] They're just asking us to donate some money towards it, okay?
[22:02] They're already going to do it.
[22:04] They already approved it.
[22:05] So this would just be out of our good will of doing it.
[22:08] It's not going to prevent them from doing it.
[22:10] They already approved that.
[22:11] Just wanted to clarify that.
[22:13] Yeah, I appreciate that.
[22:14] My only fear is that if we don't do anything,
[22:16] then we're not going to get anything down the road.
[22:18] I do think that that's probably an unfounded fear, like you said.
[22:25] So I wish they would have, or maybe we could ask for a memorandum of un...
[22:30] If this doesn't pass tonight, if it doesn't, then it doesn't matter. But that's going to where I stand on it. Mr. Lindsey, I think we better be really careful and make sure that we're being a good partner because in about two and a half months, we're going to be asking them for a lot more than $25,000.
[22:51] We took in last month over $200,000 in excess, just in sales tax, what we took in last
[23:00] year.
[23:02] And then if we really want to get down the nuts and bolts of it, Ms. Ventura didn't
[23:06] have to bring this to us. She could have cut a chick for it. The only reason it's coming
[23:12] for us and not because she's asking to take it out of fun balance. When in reality, this
[23:16] really not even our call. The only reason we're voting on the night goes coming out of
[23:20] flim ballots. But I would caution everybody, be very, very careful. Politics is about
[23:27] relationships and they're asking us for $25,000. We're going to be asking them for
[23:33] tens of millions of dollars in a couple of months and I would hate for there to be
[23:39] animosity over $25,000.
[23:44] Okay, thank you. Any other comments or questions?
[23:48] So you're not, I believe we're ready to vote,
[24:18] that passes, am I right on that?
[24:22] Okay, my math is not the sharpest.
[24:25] That passes on a six to three to one vote.
[24:30] We don't need to worry about MOUs or anything like that going forward.
[24:37] So that was 3.5.4, moving on now to FYI, 3.6, 0. FYI, this fincher.
[24:47] I just wanted to take a minute and show you all that the City of Columbia does let us utilize.
[24:54] I know most of you are aware of this, but some of the new board members may not be aware that some of our schools do not have adequate facilities for fields.
[25:03] So this is an MOU that I signed with the City of Columbia to let us use their city parks.
[25:08] And I think it it just it partners with them giving us the land back. I'm I'm hoping that we are on the path of
[25:17] Goodwill and
[25:18] Hope to move forward in a positive direction with the city. Thank you very much
[25:29] Yeah, I'm telling the look place where I'm not forgetting anything
[25:33] Just while we're on this section the next section is announcements and communications
[25:37] I did just want to give a shout out. It is a school counselor's week and it is love the bus month
[25:43] So please love a bus driver, thank a bus driver and thank a school counselor.
[25:50] Okay.
[25:51] Thank you very much.
[25:53] A couple items coming up from our planning purposes.
[25:56] We have a work session scheduled the 21st of February.
[25:59] And we have planned a border treat for March 4th, which we'll find out more.
[26:10] We'll get more of the details in the agenda as we get a little closer.
[26:13] One of the things that the work session that I'll be coming up is what director Ventura and I put together as far as suggestions for a evaluation form.
[26:28] Is there anything else that needs to be brought up?
[26:31] I just have a quick question for you.
[26:34] I heard, I mean, we've had a shortage of bus drivers.
[26:38] How is that coming along?
[26:39] Because I know that that's been a really big problem.
[26:42] as far as buses running late in students getting to school late.
[26:47] Mr. Perryman, do you want to take that one?
[26:48] We right now are driver-wise around 20 short.
[26:54] So the buses running late are double-ups.
[26:57] We have a lot of folks who are working and driving twice as far as they are supposed to be driving.
[27:03] That has actually strained us in that our bus driver population is an aging population.
[27:09] and many of them physically cannot take driving five to six to seven hours a day and that's
[27:16] what we've been asking lots to do. So while we've been able to hire new drivers because
[27:21] of increased wages off of the salary study last year, we have seen about the same rate
[27:27] leave us and most of it has not been for being unhappy. It's just been because circumstance
[27:32] does not dictate what they were capable of doing. So we're pushing forward. We met yesterday
[27:38] and executive and had a long talk about drivers and how to maybe try different things to
[27:44] then we have in trying to get them in. Please note that the drivers that are driving now,
[27:49] most of them are running additional routes. We are trying our best to let parents know as far
[27:56] in advance as we can. Unfortunately, sometimes when we find out is at 530 in the morning on a
[28:04] We have four to five more people out that day than we thought we would.
[28:09] And normally we have a full fleet staff of drivers and we have 12 full time subdrivers
[28:14] to cover those outages.
[28:16] None of our subdrivers are our positions are filled plus we have the large outage.
[28:22] So we're trying as best we can and we just ask people to be as patient with us as
[28:27] we can.
[28:28] But we will get everyone home every day.
[28:30] We call, we make sure people know what we're doing as quickly as we can as just a real strain right now
[28:37] But to answer your question, it's kind of been a wash and it is not uncommon
[28:44] with the counties around us. I know Williamson at one point was down 50 five drivers and it just was a real strain on everyone
[28:52] Is there anything we can do
[28:55] to assist in
[28:57] finding more drivers? Is there something
[29:00] Honestly, I mean, what could be done about this?
[29:04] Honestly, as we talked yesterday, before you get to finances, is just word of mouth.
[29:09] We hire most drivers off of other people mentioning that this is a full-time job, even though
[29:15] you only are supposed to work 20 hours a week, you receive full-time benefits.
[29:20] That means your health insurance is there.
[29:22] You have options to vision if you drive for five years, then you have state retirement
[29:27] that you can become part of. Lots of really positive things that are in that job that I don't
[29:33] think people understand. We also are looking at maybe hiring people who just drive in the morning
[29:40] and people who just drive in the afternoon and starting to team them up. So before and I know
[29:44] Ms. Ventura was going to mention some specifics we've talked about but the biggest thing that we see
[29:49] is just anyone who says something that you think might be willing to or be good at it,
[29:55] talk to them about it, have them reach out to us and we can find some really positive things.
[30:00] So, then today, we handle all of your training. We pay for your training. We pay for your licensure. We pay for your health card. We really try our best to make it a positive for folks.
[30:11] Ms. Fincher, did you want to add something?
[30:14] As we move into budget season, I think we have a couple of ideas. Again, I don't know. I wish I had a crystal ball, and I wish I had all the answers.
[30:24] But, you know, we've talked about different pay increases for them, we've talked about signing bonuses, incentivizing it that way.
[30:33] You know, right now our drivers drive about four hours a day.
[30:39] I know that Marshall County pays them for five hours a day.
[30:43] So we're looking at all different pay packages.
[30:45] the other issue you run into that is fortunate and unfortunate is most of these are retirees
[30:53] and there is a limit to how much income they can make. So we are also up against because we have this
[30:59] this aging population that I could not be more appreciative that they agreed to drive for us,
[31:04] but money is not always the incentive. So finding things that we can incentivize them with.
[31:10] So if you talk to anybody who's somewhat interested, find out, send them to Jennifer, send them to
[31:16] We'd love to know what they want.
[31:19] I would just say, I would have, we've been creative.
[31:23] We have a teacher that's driving right now.
[31:26] And we're trying to look into those types of things.
[31:28] Can we make that work?
[31:30] We're looking at, can we combine their hours with cafeteria service?
[31:33] Can we combine them with something else?
[31:35] So all of those types of things.
[31:37] And I will say, usually money is not the motivation for these folks.
[31:41] I'll give you, we do have one employee who came to us last year
[31:43] after he received his raise and he said,
[31:46] I cannot make this much money because with my retirement
[31:50] and this and we actually sat down with
[31:52] in Jennifer sat down with him.
[31:54] We figured out what he can make an hour
[31:56] and he agreed and signed that even though you're supposed
[31:59] to pay me this, I only want this.
[32:03] So the real motivation for those folks is rarely the money,
[32:07] but more people you can get that word out to,
[32:11] we would be super appreciative to you.
[32:14] Thank you.
[32:15] Lastly I'd like to say is thank you to all the schools
[32:17] and classrooms and principals that took care of us
[32:20] and appreciated this during school board appreciation month.
[32:24] We all appreciate that just as much as you all have shown
[32:26] your appreciation for us so that makes us feel good.
[32:30] With that being said, I'll entertain a motion to adjourn.
[32:33] Motion from Mr. Mr. McGee.
[32:37] I'm sorry, I looked right at you.
[32:38] Second from Michelle, all those in favor stand up and leave.