By Eric Curl
June 3, 2022 (updated) – Welcome to the first edition of Savannah Agenda’s new feature, School Matters, where you can learn a bit about what the Savannah-Chatham County School Board is doing with your hard earned tax dollars to help shape young minds.
Covid absences
COVID-19 continues to make its lingering presence known. In Chatham County, three Savannah-Chatham County school board members are among the latest residents to catch the virus.
The school board members, including Chairman Joe Buck, were unable to attend Wednesday’s meeting in person after contracting COVID-19, according to board member David Bringman, who presided over the meeting due to Buck’s absence. In addition to Buck, board members Shawn Kachmar and Tonia Howard-Hall were not at the meeting after contracting the virus, although Howard-Hall participated in the meeting remotely.
Given the number of at-home COVID tests that do not get reported, there is a now a greater focus on other indicators such as hospital admissions, hospital occupancy, and overall vaccination rates when assessing the community impact of COVID-19, according to the Georgia Department of Public Health-Coastal Health District.
Currently, the Coastal Health District is placing emphasis on tracking each county’s COVID Community Level, which is determined weekly by combining a number of indicators to assign a single level: low risk, medium risk, or high risk. The COVID Community Level for Chatham County was low, as of June 2, with 605 reported cases in the last two weeks.
About 64 percent of Chatham’s residents have reportedly received at least one dose of the vaccine and 57 percent are fully vaccinated. Among those is school board member Howard-Hall, who said via email on Thursday that she is fully vaccinated with a booster.
“My symptoms are very mild and I’m recovering nicely,” she said.
A few hours after this story was originally posted, Buck shared in an email that he was also fine.
“I have a little congestion- no fever and don’t feel bad at all- shook too many hands I think during graduations,” he said.
And on Friday morning, Kachmar said in an email that he too had very mild symptoms and the vaccine and booster made a big difference. He said he had to isolate overseas and test negative before he could fly back to the states, which he is why he wasn’t able to call into the meeting.
“I did, however, share thoughts / concerns about agenda items prior to the meeting,” he said.
Port Wentworth Elementary to be school’s police headquarters
During Wednesday’s meeting, the board approved staff’s recommendation to award a $145,000 design contract with Raymond Engineering to convert Port Wentworth Elementary School into a headquarters for the school system’s police department.
The conversion plan comes after the school system’s announcement earlier this year that the school was being phased out and would no longer be used for instructional purposes. Students from Port Wentworth are being redistricted beginning in the next school year to Garden City Elementary, Brock Elementary and Rice Creek School.
School officials report Port Wentworth Elementary was phased out per specifications of the Georgia Department of Education, specifically to adhere to school capacity guidelines, minimize the need for future redistricting and plan for community growth, according to a February presentation regarding the plan.
The police department’s jurisdiction covers more than 360 square miles, 62 schools and administrative buildings, approximately 38,000 students and 5,600 employees, according to the department’s web page.
School Superintendent Ann Levett said that most of the resource officers – a majority of the department’s staff – and crossing guards are located at the school buildings but that the building is needed to accommodate central staff, training, meetings and new vehicles.
“(Port Wentworth Elementary) can no longer house students but we will be using it fully,” Levett said.
Support for recommended budget, proposed tax rate
The school board also supported the recommended property tax rate of 17.631 mills, a .50 mill reduction compared to the current rate, although three public hearings are scheduled to be held later this month before it is formally adopted. The rate is higher than the state’s recommended rollback rate, 16.218 mills, which is meant to offset increased revenue to the tax digest due to inflation. As a result, the school board is required by state law to advertise the rate as a tax increase and hold three hearings concerning the millage rate. The hearings are scheduled to be held at 11 a.m. and 6 p.m. on June 15 and 6 p.m. on June 22, with adoption of the rate scheduled for a special called meeting at 6:30 p.m. on June 22. (This story has been corrected from an earlier version stating the rate amounted to the rollback rate.)
Based on the proposed millage rate, the board tentatively approved staff’s recommended $792 million budget for the 2023 fiscal year, which begins in July. To accommodate the board’s request to implement a $15 minimum wage for school employees, staff will make some adjustments to the budget prior to the spending plan being formally adopted following the millage rate hearings this month. The budget is scheduled to be adopted during the special called meeting on June 22.
You can read a bit more about the tentative budget approval in this WTOC report.
Bell time adjustments
The Board also approved staff’s recommendation to modify bell times for some west side schools and a dozen SCCPSS elementary schools as a way to improve routing efficiencies as the school system’s continues to be impacted by bus driver vacancies. You can read more details about the changes in this Savannah Morning News article.
More board actions from Wednesday are documented in the school system’s meeting briefs post. You can also watch the meeting on the school system’s YouTube page.
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