Alba-Golden school board trustees approved continuing wage payments for all employees Monday and postponed the May election.

Payments will include contractual and non-contractual, salaried and non-salaried employees who are instructed not to report during an emergency closing. 

Employees will be paid in accordance with each person’s pay rate for the regular duties during the closure.

The board postponed the May school board election to Nov. 3. All candidates who have filed will be on the ballot. Voter registration deadline for the election is Oct. 5 with a deadline to submit application for a ballot by mail set for Oct. 23. Early voting will run Oct. 19-30.

The board unanimously approved purchasing a football scoreboard from Daktronics of Allen for $24,458. The board approved $15,000 from the general fund to go with $10,000 Athletic Director Drew Webster has been saving from his budget.

“The scoreboard is going to be a little bigger than what we have now. It will still sit on the same beams so we won’t have to do anything different on that,” Webster said. “I have set back $10,000 in my budget. What we are looking at is getting roughly around $15,000 for this scoreboard. All of our outdoor fields have been updated. Daktronics comes and services the scoreboard every year. It will be compatible with the one we have at the baseball field.”

After hearing a presentation from Joe Dan Lee of the TASB superintendent search, the board approved the qualifications and characteristics they are seeking in a new superintendent. Lee also urged board members to get people from the district to fill out the survey posted on the website. 

Lee said there was a lot of interest in the job. “We have had around 40 people begin the application process. You can pretty much throw out 25 of those because they apply for every open job out there,” Lee said. “We will find some great candidates and we hope to make your decision difficult.”

Interim superintendent Eddie White gave an update on the district’s student meal program. “We are putting out about 300 food packets a day. We were running the bus route every day and giving a breakfast and lunch to each child. Basically it comes to about 3,000 meals a week,” White said. “We are now running them two days a week. They get two days worth of meals on Monday and three on Wednesday. It has been worth the time and effort.”

Each of the principals said the teachers and students are doing a good job with student learning and getting their lessons online.

“Our teachers are mainly on Google classroom. It looks like about 90 percent of our high school students are doing the work and getting it in to their teachers,” High School Principal Mike Mize noted. “They are all doing the best they can. Our teachers have adapted very well.”

The district has 402 elementary and 427 secondary students enrolled.