Smackover-Norphlet School Board approves employee benefit changes

By Brittany Williams

Staff Writer

SMACKOVER — The Smackover-Norphlet School Board approved changes to the district’s health insurance benefits at its meeting Tuesday.

“We interview several providers and what you have is the same or a little bit better coverage for less costs and I’m going to recommend that you approve those as presented,” district superintendent Dave Wilcox said.

The district currently has health insurance through Blue Cross Blue Shield, but the new benefits would include dental and vision coverage from Delta Dental and its counterpart Superior Vision; Lincoln Financial Group for short- and long-term disability coverage and group life insurance, district business manager Lori Willis said.

“A representative is working on … life insurance, cancer, accident and things like that employees can opt for,” Willis said. “The rates are already lower than what we’ve got now, except for two age categories and he’s working with them now to get them to drop those two categories since we’re going with the package. Regardless, overall I think it’s a lot cheaper.”

During the board meeting, the agenda called for an adoption of Revolution 2017-1, but Wilcox asked the board to table that because Act 1105 doesn’t go in effect until August.

Act 1105 limits how the amount of fund balances a district must maintain. It states, “If … at the close of the fiscal year a public school district has a net legal balance that exceeds 20 percent of the public school district’s current year net legal balance revenues, the public school district shall within five years reduce its net legal balance to no more than 20 percent of the public school district’s current year net legal balance revenues.”

If a district fails to do so within the five-year period, the state department of education would “withhold subsequent state funding from that public school district in an amount equal to the amount the public school district failed to reduce its net legal balance for that year.”

“We do not have to do this at this time, but we will be revisiting this for an exact dollar amount on it in the future,” Wilcox said.

The board also approved two legal transfers, Arkansas Public School vehicle and property insurance renewal, an audit renewal with Cobb & Suskie and several policy changes at the meeting.

“The school vehicle and property insurances (is with) the same carrier. Everything’s the same. The vehicle coverage is $15,525. The property coverage is $77,545.34,” Wilcox said. “We’ve used Cobb & Suskie for several years. They’ve done a great job. I want to say that they’ve gone up $100. The total cost is $4,900. Part of that is the state’s making it a little harder to contract out with folks.”

Policy changes include minor changes to the Smackover Preschool handbook that include the new director’s name, calendar and a brief statement that requests parents to not use cell phones while dropping off or picking up their children, curriculum director Jennifer Lee said. Most of the policy changes reflect changes in state and federal law, Wilcox said.

The school district’s policy that details its Smart Core curriculum and graduation requirements was amended to reflect the state’s new requirement for students participating in the curriculum to take an economics course emphasizing personal finance.

“In the legislative session, they … adopted personal finance standards,” Lee said. “What happened was we finally got to the point that we grandfathered out a different group and now we’re going back through that thing. So, it’s really about personal finance and … They plan to rewrite the economics standards during this school year so that we’re not adding on another graduation requirement.”

After an executive session, board members accepted the resignation of special education paraprofessional Debbie Harper.

They also approved to hire secondary English teacher Abby Gavin, Norphlet Elementary fifth grade literacy/social studies teacher Haylee Pepper, English As a Second Language (ESL) coordinator Hannah Murphy, preschool director Marta Jinks, special education paraprofessional Dorinda Stephens, NES administrative assistant Cathy Sims and cafeteria worker Jacqueline Hampton.

Gavin and Pepper’s employment is pending until they complete all requirements of the Masters of Art in Teaching (MAT) program.

The Smackover-Norphlet School Board’s next meeting is scheduled at 5:30 p.m. Monday, July 10 in the boardroom of the district’s central office.

Brittany Williams may be contacted by email at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter and like her on Facebook @BWilliamsEDNT for updates on Union County school news.

Upcoming Events