The Smackover-Norphlet school board held its regular monthly meeting on Monday, June 21, at the district’s central office.
Board members approved the previous meeting’s minutes and the monthly financial report to begin the meeting.
During the financial statement discussion, board member Damon Goodwin asked that focus be put on the Smackover-Norphlet School District’s girls’ sports programs following recent renovations to the Smackover High School baseball field’s lighting and ongoing work on lighting at the football stadium.
“We’ve spent a ton on boys’ sports, so we need to see those funds matched on our girls [sports] too… I would like to see a plan for that,” Goodwin said.
Superintendent Jason Black asked for future suggestions and ideas on this topic.
ESSER funds
The bulk of discussion in new business centered around the district’s plan for deploying over $3.8 million in ESSER 2 (Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Funds) and ESSER 3 funding.
ESSER 2 was part of the federal Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act enacted in December 2020 and ESSER 3 was part of the American Recovery Plan enacted in March 2021. Funds were allocated to state education departments and then distributed to local districts.
One central aspect of the district’s plan involves extra duty pay for staff members.
“I wanted to give an overall rundown of what we received from the federal government in ESSER 2 and ESSER 3 funds… ESSER 2 funds were $948,000 and ESSER 3 funds were $2.1 million for a total of $3,801,866. There is a note in ESSER 3 that we have to spend about 20% — roughly $400,000 — on any lost instruction that occurred during the pandemic,” Black said.
Extra duty pay is based around the various tasks district employees performed due to changes brought by COVID-19.
“We worked up $17-per-day which is $3,026 for 178 instruction days, minus any days an employee missed other than school events… It will be $3,026 per employee that we wanted to do here at the end of June,” Black said.
The extra duty pay portion of the funding totals $561,000.
Black went on to mention other entries in the district’s plan for utilizing the ESSER funds and discussed how each project needs to be related to preparing for future pandemics, ranging from projects discussed in previous board meetings to money for unplanned district expenses.
“Some other things we’ve discussed are the Norphlet (Middle School) HVAC project; there’s $500,000 there for about a $750-$800,000 job all the way through… A bus with air conditioning — $110,000; (and) Smackover Elementary and High School cameras,” Black said. “You have to rationalize this back to COVID and what you will do to prevent and make situations better in the future, so you think about HVAC — that’s air quality; cameras — contact tracing and being able to locate who students have been around.”
Other projects mentioned include summer school funding, professional development for instructors, mental health resources, Smackover gym HVAC , classroom HVAC units, virtual learning resources, mobile Wi-Fi hotspots and further unplanned expenses.
“With unplanned expense, there can always be things that come up. We may be short on our estimates but feel like we estimated high. We have $1.7 million for district expenditures,” Black said.
The extra duty pay portion of the plan was approved unanimously.
Buckaroo Stadium
An update on ongoing work on the lighting at Buckaroo Stadium was given before the meeting concluded.
“I have asked Billy Dawson [with GeoSport Lighting] to come in July and do an update. Evers Electric has done about 75% of what they needed to do… It’s a little over the timeline but I think they will be able to get it knocked out by the end of next week,” Black said. “By the time we get to our July meeting, I hope it’s a done deal.”
The lighting project for the football stadium was approved during a May specially-called meeting, when board members approved a bid from Evers Electric to perform preliminary electrical work for $36,123.43 and for GeoSport Lighting to remove and replace the stadium’s light poles and fixtures for $177,440.
The next regular SNSD board meeting will be held Monday, July 19.