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The Coffee County School Board held a work session on Nov. 21.

School Board Chairman Thomas Ballard commented during a break from the session that there is no budget amendment to go to the county right now for the Director’s salary.

“It may not even need a budget amendment, so there may be enough,” Ballard said. “There’s enough money in there right now to take care of everything, and if we needed a budget amendment, it probably wouldn’t be until April or May and even then, we’ll see how the budget shapes out.”

Ballard explained that budget amendments are only between major budget categories and that line item changes are at the Director’s discretion by policy 2.201.

The 2024-25 Coffee County School budget has $137,395 allocated for director salary. Upon his termination without cause, Dr. Charles Lawson will continue to collect salary through the end of his contract. The interim director’s contract stipulates a $10,000 per month salary. This year’s budget ends June 30. 

School Board eyes contracting TSBA for director’s search

Among the topics on the agenda, the Board discussed whether they wanted to handle the search for a new Director of Schools themselves or contract it out to the Tennessee School Board Association as was brought up at the Nov. 11 meeting.

The TSBA offers services ranging in price from $3,000 to $15,000 to assist the Board in finding a new Director

Though there were concerns raised about the options, all Board members were in favor of contracting out the search to the TSBA at the work session, though there was some discussion over what tier of service they wanted to go with.

Board member Scott Hansert was in favor of Plan 1 that the TSBA offers.

“I think we’ve got a lot of people around locally that we could look at and take it from there,” Hansert commented during the session. “We’ve already got some candidates that’s wanting to apply, and once we get the word out, there’s probably going to be more. That’s my opinion. I’d like to hear everybody else’s as well.”

Board member Robert Gilley suggested going with either plan 2 or 3 due to the amount of data that is received.

“With either of those, we gain so much record of the decision that we can have behind us to honestly and fully see what’s out there,” he said.

Gilley says that it is important to have documentation of the decision-making process in case of any pushback.

Hansert changed his suggestion to Plan 2 as well after further discussion. Board member Beth Yentsch suggested going with Plan 3 due to the community aspect.

“I think the fact that we would begin to include employees in the decision and the community after our recent Facebook posts might not be a bad thing to make them feel like ‘Okay, I’m being considered in what I want,’” said Yentsch. “Then when the decision is made depending on, hopefully, really good results, they will know that they had input.”

The item will be added to the agenda for the Dec. 9 meeting.