The Gainesville City School Board approved the millage rate 4-1 Wednesday night after no one spoke at the final public hearing.
"We'll take that as a sign of support," said Superintendent Dr. Jeremy Williams. "The board went ahead and adopted the 6.85, which still puts us at an additional deficit of $800,000 in the reserves."
The hearing was held ahead of a board work session. Sammy Smith was the only opposing vote. Three public hearings were held ahead of the vote, with one person attending.
The board looked next to School Resource Officers. There are four officers at city schools, funded by the school system, but with the addition of Mundy Mill Academy, they wanted one more officer.
This officer would be funded by Gainesville Police Department.
"When you've got 8,000 students... we have 2,100 students at the high school and about 1,800 at the middle school. When you look across the K-5 levels, you're talking about one SRO for six schools," said Williams. "We really want to increase that presence, not only from a safety stand point but make sure our students have an opportunity to have a good experience with Gainesville Police Department and see the support there of someone who wants to help them out."
The new SRO would be on hand to serve multiple schools, like the current SROs.
In new business, Dr. Williams discussed the capital projects list. The board agreed to add four projects, and later in the meeting added a fifth, to the plan: updates to the softball facility, an addition or replacing the band room and PAC lighting and stage improvements at the high school and baseball and softball field lighting at the middle school were approved unanimously. During the discussion near the end of the meeting, Chairman Brett Mercer suggested adding new playground equipment to the list, noting the Atlanta Falcons Hometown Grant the system had received. That grant aims to help school districts or individual schools facilitate sustainable physical activity and healthy eating initiatives.
Also at the work session, the Board received an update on Enota Elementary. Adrian Niles told to board that, among other things, bathroom and above ceiling piping was going in, concrete pours for the cafeteria was complete, and block work and roof decking were also done. Niles told the Board they lost a day and a half because of rain, but were still ahead of schedule.
