The Coahoma County School District was paying in the neighborhood of $70,000 to Coahoma Early College High School for transportation, but the amount was higher than it should have been.
“See, what happened was, when Aggie was established, that school district was carved out of the county school district and so monies that the state was giving to the county, because those students came out of the county, we were told by law we had to give them some of our transportation funds,” said Coahoma County interim superintendent Dr. Ilean Richards during Tuesday’s school board meeting. “So when I did our research, I found that’s how all of this came. It’s based upon the ADA (average daily attendance). What they now have to give to us is a list of students. We have to determine if those students live in the county. Once we find that out, we can determine how much we pay them instead of them just giving us a fee to pay.”
Richards said, in the past, the county was paying the same fee every year.
After working things out with CECHS, Richards said the county only has to pay them around $50,000 in transportation fees for the 2018-19 school year. The amount could increase or decrease in 2019-20.
“We worked it out. We found out through the law what we were supposed to pay,” Richards said. “It’s based on ADA. As their ADA goes up, we pay more. As it goes down, we pay less.”
In other business:
* The district held a special board meeting on Saturday to look at staff, teachers, who is certified and who is not certified, but no action was taken.
A notice of the meeting was placed on the district’s website and at the administration building.
According to state law, a media outlet does not need to be directly notified of a special meeting unless it requests in writing to be given notice.
The Press Register learned about the meeting through other individuals in the community who were unaware it took place at the time it did.
Richards said, in most cases, the district will be able to make sure more people know about the meetings in advance. The special meeting was scheduled to be held at a different time, but that was around the time board president Patrick Campbell died and it was rescheduled for Saturday.
“This is not going to be normal,” Richards said. “It’s not something that we do all the time. It just happened that the other time we lost our president.”
The Press Register filed a written request on Tuesday to be notified of all meetings — regular and special called — going forward.
* Lula city clerk Rodrick Monroe was appointed to Campbell’s seat on Tuesday.
A special election will be held in November to determine who will hold the seat for the remainder of the term.
Looking back, Richards had fond memories of Camobell.
“He was the best,” she said. “I learned some leadership skills from him. He helped me to learn Coahoma County and the school district and how to become an integral part of the school district, so we miss him.”
Lester Myles Sr. is the new board president.
