N

Members of the Coffee County Schools Board of Education voted unanimously to fund its afterschool program for elementary and middle school students after grant funding failed to come through at the last minute.

During the regular board meeting Aug. 12, Excellence Program Director Tonya Garner presented board members with four possible proposals for keeping some sort of afterschool program in place for the 2024-2025 school year.

“I have lost sleep over this,” Garner said. “It has been devastating I know to the staff, to the students, to the families, so this has really been something.”

Garner said after learning Coffee County Schools would not be receiving the $500,000 in funding, a survey was sent out to district parents at the elementary and middle school levels to see if they would consider paying $10 a day to fund the program for this school year.

The district received 697 responses as of Aug. 6, with 436 answering yes, they would be interested in that.

Board members were in agreement that due to the short notice, the district should pay for the program from its own funds for the current school year and review before making a decision about the program for next year.

“This late in the game, starting this year up…I think that is something we need to consider is trying to figure out a way to fund this and get through this and kick the can down the road until we can accurately find out exactly what we can do or can’t do,” Board member Robert Gilley said. “I don’t think parents need much more burden in life right now.”

Garner said the district should not count on receiving that grant funding in the future, as there continues to be less funding available for an increasing number of applicants.

“There had been 83 applicants this go-round, they said they had never had so many applicants, and I believe $27 million was requested and they only had $7 million,” she said.

Board Member Kathy Rose said the change was hitting parents at the last minute and a program that requires them to pay could create an unexpected hardship.

“I think it would be a nice goodwill gesture if we as a board said, okay, you were counting on this, we didn’t get the money that we thought we were going to get, we are going to fund it this year, but you understand that if you want this to continue for the following year, there could well be a charge for it in the coming school year,” Rose said.

However, Rose cautioned that the message should be clear that just because Coffee County Schools will fund the program for the current school year, if it is going to continue in the future, there could be a cost associated with it.

Board members expressed agreement that the program should continue on in the same format that it has operated under for the last five years, providing remediation and other educational benefits.

Board member Thomas Ballard asked Director of Schools Dr. Charles Lawson what the timeline would be for starting up the afterschool program, assuming the budget amendment needed to fund it is passed during the next meeting in September.

“I think the programming would start up right after Labor Day as if it were funded by 21st Century,” Lawson said. “Understand, most of the leg work has already been done in preparation before we received the denial.”

Board member Brent Parsley made a motion to approve a free structed educational afterschool program to be 3-5:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday with the entire program to be reviewed in December by the Board of Education.

The motion was unanimously approved by the Board of Education and the program is set to begin Tuesday, Sept. 3.