Weakley County School Board Approves Multiple Budget Resolutions

The Weakley County School Board approved multiple budget resolutions at their September board meeting. The first was to add funding for an additional teaching position at Martin Primary School. Cupples stated that MPS needed a kindergarten teacher.

“The revenue would be coming out of TESA, and we did not budget 100% of TESA because we got a little extra in that last July. Plus, with any additional student, we get more money from there because it's student-based money. So that is coming from TESA, but it covers a kindergarten teacher as a primary cause of growth,” Cupples stated.

The second resolution was to add funding for the Gleason School press box which Cupples states was an ongoing project.

“It's kind of been delayed for several different factors, the biggest of which has been cost. It is a tackling liability issue we have with the press box at Gleason High School and the football stadium. Early numbers were projected at half a million to replace that and they finally came down to about $300,000. Our last quote was $125,000, which is more in line. So the quote would essentially replace the press box with the same square footage. It would be a wooden frame, metal around that, air conditioning and all that kind of stuff, similar to what they've got,” Cupples said.

“But taking care of some of the safety issues we have with the structure underneath. So that's $150,000. That was a summer project that we had set up for fund balance. We just hadn't been able to get to it. We're going to wait until the last home game to get it approved and then do demo and get started. Bids would go out once approved. We're estimating $125,000 to $150,000.

The third resolution was the dental and vision incentive program for bus drivers which Cupples stated is one of the hardest positions.

“This resolution is moving money into insurance so that we can offer dental and vision to our bus drivers to give them another incentive to be able to get our kids to and from school on time and safe. So the cost of that is $7,650. We've got 19 bus drivers that will take that option and that would. cover that line so it's moving it into insurance out of the payroll line,” Cupples stated.

The fourth resolution is for funding the local portion of the E-rate project to upgrade internet cabling and access points. This would be $150,000 moved from the fund balance which covers the 20% match to re-do the network in the County High Schools.

“A lot of the cabling is old. This will bring it up to 10-year capability. Access points are already being started. This is still going through some paperwork with the E-Rate folks at the state and federal side, but this will allow us to pay for our 20% match. It's going to be upwards of a $16,000 job. We will pay $150,000,” Cupples said.

The fifth resolution was a carryover of funding from a PreK Grant. Cupples stated this was for a special education preschool grant.

“That is carryover money plus new money that we've received since budget time and the total of that is going into some teacher benefits,” Cupples stated.

The sixth resolution is carryover for the SPARC Grant.

“That is part of the SPARC grant, the vocational education grant. It just all didn't get spent, so we're putting that back into the operating budget. So that's coming out of fund balance,” Cupples said.

The seventh resolution covers funding from the AG TAG Grant which was awarded by the Department of Agriculture.

The last resolution covers carryover from the Public Schools Security Grant in the amount of $142,655 to use for security upgrades to make campuses safer.