Mineola School District looking at 2 percent raise

By TOMMY ANDERSON | tommyanderson@suddenlink.net
Posted 8/24/16

If all goes as planned the employees of the Mineola Independent School District will be happy to see their paychecks have blossomed to the tune of a two percent increase this school year.

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Mineola School District looking at 2 percent raise

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If all goes as planned the employees of the Mineola Independent School District will be happy to see their paychecks have blossomed to the tune of a two percent increase this school year.

The Mineola School Board met their regular August session last Monday night and held a budget workshop as part of the agenda. During that session the trustees voted unanimously to include a two percent pay raise for all the district in the 2016-2017 budget, which will be formally presented at a public hearing on Wednesday, Aug. 31.

Should the budget be adopted in the board meeting after the public hearing, this pay hike will cost the district some $122,801 over the course of the school year.

Another long awaited increase in the proposed budget will be increased pay for substitute teachers. The proposed new rate will be $60 per day for non-degreed substitues, $75 per day for degreed and $80 per day for certified teachers serving as substitutes.

Still, the district is looking at a budget that holds the line on the current tax rate of $1.17 per $100 valuation. All of this tax levy will go to maintenance and operation with there being no funding necessary for the interest and sinking fund.

The total 2016-2017 budget as proposed totals $12,837,323. Or $33,691 less than the 2015-2016 budget of $13,161,014.

Assistant Superintendent for Business and Operations William Bjork made the budget presentation to the board and at the onset had two bad pieces of information to pass on to them. First he reported that property values for the district had dropped again this year, by almost $400,000, and also that tax collections were running about half a percent below traditional collections coming in at about 96.2 per cent.

Superintendent Kim Tunnell briefed the board on the consideration of establishing an Education Foundation to benefit the district. She said that the district would be under no obligation to the foundation once it was set up other than to provide office space for its director to work from. Board Vice President Dr. John Abbott questioned the need for an Education Foundation with the Meredith Foundation being such a prominent force in the Mineola community and it having benefitted the Mineola ISD so much in the past.

The vote on approval to establish the Education Foundation was 5-1 with Dr. Abbott voting against. The vote to approve $22,000 to fund a consulting services with Foundation Innovation, LLC to set up the foundation passed by the same vote count, with Abbott voting against again.

“I think you have to vote your conscience and I just don’t want to see anything interfere with the Meredith Foundation. It has been too valuable an asset for the Mineola ISD for too long to put that relationship in jeopardy,” Abbott said.

Tunnell told the board she expects the district will receive a $15,000 grant to offset a large portion of the $22,000 expense of counseling services by Foundation Innovation.

In other action on a jammed full agenda the school board:

• received a report from Tunnell on preliminary State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) scores and rankings. She said all campuses had shown improvement over the previous year and that all had met state standards, but school rankings had not yet been announced;

• approved the hiring of Becky Meadows as a special education instructor;

• approved the 2016-2017 Student Handbook. In the past the Mineola ISD has had a separate handbook for each of its four campuses, but this year rolled it into one handbook with four appendixes, one for each campus;

• gave the okay to the consent agenda which included minutes of the last regular and one special meeting of the trustees, the 2016-2017 Student Code of Conduct, and a resolution regarding extracurricular status of the 4-H organization;

• awarded the 2016-2017 fuel bid for the District to the only bidder, Duko Oil Company from Emory at eight cents per gallon over wholesale price for both unleaded gasoline and diesel fuel;

• awarded the waste disposal bid for 2016-2017 to Republic Services, the low of two bids received at $807 per month.