An emergency meeting of the school board was called for Sept. 10 to address the issues of the School Budget for 2001-2002 and to modify the school calendar. The opening of school was delayed in Putnam County due to the lack of a funded budget. The meeting started out with Dr. Michael Martin presenting his propositions for the budget this year.
The school board had asked for a twenty-six cent increase in the property tax, which means an additional twenty-six cents per $1,000 of assessed value. For the owners of homes valued at $100,000 dollars, that would have meant a $10 increase in property taxes. The County Commission only gave a ten cent increase, so Dr. Martin had to make several cuts.
Some of the cuts that were proposed were a ten cent increase in lunch prices and no bus transportation within a half a mile of a school which means no buses will be running in the city of Cookeville, Baxter, or Monterey. Something that will affect every after school activity that requires transportation is that the activity must pay for the gas and the bus bill.
Dr. Martin in his proposal wanted to "work with the County Commission to arrive at a reasonable process for either escrowing funds to provide for the startup costs of new facilities or place a moratorium on new construction until it is possible to operate those new schools." This was referring to Burks and Algood Schools.
Dr. Martin proposed to take 1% of the teachers 6% pay raise of the local portion of their salaries, Dr. Walter Derryberry made a motion to go ahead with the full 6%, about $400 per year. Dr. Martin was pleased was pleased with this proposal and pointed out that in standardized test scores from several counties in Middle Tennessee, Putnam County had the highest scores in Math, the third in English, 4th in Social Studies, and 8th in Science. He commended teachers for their hard work and dedication in spite of their low salaries.
"Education is important, we have demonstrated this, and our scores are what we are about," says Martin.
He commented that he was thankful for the board putting back the 1% for teacher pay raises.
Walking out of the meeting one of the people in the audience was overheard saying, "That was a sad thing that had to be done in there."
The budget was left for the County Commission to approve.
The County Commission approved the budget that the School Board set, but did not work to compromise for the new schools. The Commission said that they had given the board sufficient funds to work with and would have to find a place in their budget to get money for startup costs.
During the commission meeting, Commissioner Bill Rogers was critical of both the board and the teachers in the audience commenting that this was "the worst budget he had ever seen" and that they had seemed to have "lost sight of the little children.
Just before the meeting was adjourned, Commissioner Vernon Crabtree asked to address the commissioners and the audience. Commissioner Danny Burgess interrupted him with a motion to adjourn, seconded by Commissioner Johnnie Wheeler in an attempt to prevent Crabtree from speaking. Chairman Rogers allowed Crabtree to continue.
In his comments, Crabtree praised the hard work of Dr. Martin and the board as well as teachers and emphasized the importance of funding education in the future. Commissioner Mark Herren addressed the commission after Crabtree and pointed out that the tax increase requested by the board would actually have been only a small increase for homeowners and stressed that "education is our future."
This page was created by Monica Bos.