GAINESVILLE – The vote to approve the fiscal year 2022 Hall County School District budget was unanimous Monday evening, but the vote to add a school-board-member healthcare option to that budget was not.
Board vice-chairman and Post 4 representative Nath Morris said he was against the move to fund optional healthcare coverage for school board members despite the fact that for over a decade state law has allowed that to happen. (Morris also expressed his opposition to provide that funding two weeks ago during the school board’s work session.)
However Monday evening Morris told his fellow board members that he had been considering his earlier statements. “After I said where I was at the last meeting during the preliminary budget, I did hear that there was support for board insurance to take place,” Morris explained.
“So I would like to consider looking at the maximum contribution (from the budget) to be just 50-percent of the premium,” Morris said pragmatically. That offer went no further as other board members said the time to adopt what the state code allows, and what several neighboring school districts already have in place, had arrived for Hall County.
“Personally I think we ought to go there if the law allows. That’s my opinion,” board member Sam Chapman said. “I understand where he (Morris) is coming from. I personally am not going to be involved in it, but I think if a board member wants to choose he ought to be able to do it.”
So a decision on funding board member healthcare was removed from the vote on the $589.2-million FY 2022 budget, then discussed and voted on separately afterwards. The vote on that latter item was 4-1 in favor of providing a healthcare coverage option with Morris being the lone dissenting vote.
The board also voted unanimously to set the school district millage rate at 16.485 mils which is a full rollback and a decrease of 4-percent compared to FY 2021.
NEW TRACTOR DONATED TO NEW DISTRICT AG-BUSINESS PROGRAM
Last September the Hall County School District announced plans to construct an ag-business center on 51-acres along the east side of Cleveland Highway (U.S 129), just north of Nopone Road for the purpose of allowing students the opportunity to have a “hands-on” learning experience in agricultural.
That innovative new program got a giant boost Monday evening from Jim Syfan, CEO of Syfan Logistics of Gainesville.
Hall County School Superintendent Will Schofield said Syfan and his son paid a recent visit to the Agri-Business Center and liked what they saw. “They looked around and said, ‘What do you need?’” Schofield said he was embarrassed to say the center needed a tractor.
“We can’t thank you enough,” Schofield told Syfan, “but $44,500, and you just stroked a check so we can have a tractor.”
Syfan responded by thanking the school board. “I applaud you for having the vision to create that farm out there. It’s quite impressive.”
The school board then went outside the district headquarters building to see the new Massey-Ferguson front loader with twin seats in the cockpit so instructors can accompany student drivers as they learn how to operate the farming implement.
School board member Sam Chapman, who is a farmer himself, said, “We want to teach kids how to do stuff hands-on! And we’re trying to get the university (system of Georgia) to give us the ag-class certification in teaching college courses.”
