County school district enrollment, staffing discussed at board work session
By JIM BROOKS
Nelson County Gazette / WBRT Radio
Friday, Sept. 5, 2014 — With the new school year underway, the Nelson County Board of Education discussed classroom staffing levels at its working session Thursday evening.
Tim Hockensmith, Nelson County School’s chief operating officer, discusses the district’s next budget.
Tim Hockensmith, the district’s chief operating officer, told the board the district’s overall enrollment — excluding pre-school — had settled to around 4,520 students, with some schools slightly over projected enrollments and some slightly under.
Sept. 15 is the final date for staffing changes, Hockensmith said.
Board Chairman Frank Hall asked Hockensmith about reports of some grades having classes larger than the ideal cap size. The district authorizes teaching positions according to the projected enrollment in each school, Hockensmith said. How those teaching positions are allocated among the grade levels is the decision of each school’s Site-Based Council.
Hall asked if the district could encourage schools to use their Section 6 funds to help pay for instructional aides for class sizes that exceed the desired maximum size. Superintendent Anthony Orr noted that the Section 6 funding is supposed to be used for instructional supplies, materials, travel or instructional equipment, not to supplement teacher pay.
Board member Diane Berry said that parents are asked to provide a seemingly expanding list of materials at the beginning of each year, and they may not understand how the district funding is allocated — especially when it comes to class sizes in their child’s school.
Kimberly Brown, director of secondary schools, tells the board about her visits to district schools during the Professional Growth district work day on Friday, Sept. 5.
Parents who have concerns about class sizes can contact school board members, but board member Damon Jackey — a former site-based council member at Bloomfield Elementary School — said class sizes are decisions made at the school level, and those questions can be directed to the site-based council members.
“The class room caps (the recommended maximum class size) is an ideal, not a hard limit,” Hall said, adding that schools have to have the flexibility to manage their classes and sizes.
BUDGET PREVIEW. Hockensmith told the board that the next budget will include the purchase of six new school buses a cost of about $93,000 each. The district owns 77 buses, 63 of which are used daily.
Buses have a useful life of about 14 years, and replacing them regularly is important in keeping the district’s transportation fleet reliable, Hockensmith said.
Next year’s budget will also include an additional $720,000 in teacher retirement system payments which the Kentucky General Assembly is requiring from school districts, he said.
TRANSPORTATION COMPLAINT. Some residents of Nelson Avenue in Chaplin told the board that the county school buses no longer will come down Nelson Avenue to pick up their children.
Former district bus driver Ed Pulliam used to drive down Nelson Avenue to pick up kids, the residents told the board. “He told us that when he retired last year, that the new bus routes may not include the street,” one resident said.
The problem is that the Nelson Avenue students must cross US62 in order to wait for the bus to pick them up. “In the morning, the kids are on the wrong side of US 62,” one resident said.
Nelson Avenue has been repaved, the residents told the board, and they believed it was suitable for bus traffic.
Board chairman Frank Hall said the board would check on the issue and see what could be done.
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