
NCOE students and teachers are back in session after an extended Christmas break due to ice and snow packed secondary roads. The school board did gather
Wednesday night and administrators said about 90% of the roads bus drivers negotiate were in ok shape. Only a few dozen of the district’s 650 or so students were expected to have to make alternative plans to get to school Thursday. Superintendent Matt Vollman also heaped praise on the custodians as well as good shepherds in the community including Bob Sutton and Levi Marsh for their efforts in clearing parking lots and walkways.
The bond certificate taking the levy out of the school board’s hands has been filed with White, Gallatin, and Hamilton Counties. That means voters will decide on the selling of bonds on April 1st. To this point, we haven’t heard many folks speaking out against the bonds specifically or the work that needs done from those funds. Rather, it’s come across as a kind of punishment amidst distrust of the school board, questions about transparency, and it’s motives.
Read more at Required Signatures Turned In Sending Bond Issue to Ballot – WRUL-FM
County Clerks will publish just how the question will be posed on the ballot in the Hometown Register, a newspaper that’s available once a week at Doug’s in Norris City. The bond measure going to the ballot will delay some efforts the board had already started work on. Assuming it passes, some asbestos abatement planned for the high school this summer will be pushed back at least a full year.
The county clerks will publish that somewhere between 10 and 60 days prior to the election, the language that will be on the ballot. And this time that will go in the Hometown Register. Because of that going on the ballot, I have spoken with our architect because we were in the beginning phases of design and bid for asbestos abatement at the high school for the floors, removal of interior doors/door replacement, he said that if after April 1st being when we would know that would be too short of a lead time for summer so that’s likely going to stall that project probably to the following summer now.
Vollman estimates that’s a $600,000 – $700,000 project. The Home Economics room renovation project will move forward however this summer thanks to a donation from the Absher Foundation.
Another small bit of good news was revealed in that fuel bids actually came in lower than the current year. NCOE Unit 3 has been paying $2.77 per gallon for fuel and $3.212 per gallon for diesel. Wednesday night, officials accepted a bid from SynEnergy for the coming year that will have them paying $2.6253 for gas and $2.9722 for diesel.
The board entered executive session at 7:20pm.