Gainesville ISD to offer telehealth
Jan. 27—Gainesville Independent School District is partnering with North Texas Medical Center to help students and staff have better access to healthcare.
Telehealth visits will be available during the school days.
"We began to have this conversation with [NTMC] about a telemedicine option where they would basically pilot this program on one of our campuses in hopes of helping our faculty and staff and students get medical attention much sooner than it would as compared to going to a doctor," said Superintendent DesMontes Stewart at a School Board meeting last week. "Initially, we had planned to start over at Chalmers, but some of our employees fell ill and we were unable to move forward with the whole full implementation. I've since reached out to another site; we're looking at starting at the Intermediate campus."
The plan is to start with the Intermediate school to finish out the current school year then expand the program to all campuses in the 2024-25 school year.
This program will be no cost to the district with NTMC providing all the supplies. However, families and staff who wish to utilize this option will still have co-pays as they would with a traditional appointment.
Budget calendar
The timeline has been set for GISD to build its 2024-25 Fiscal Year budget.
According to Finance Director Alyce Greer, the process will begin in March with looking at salary projections and increases, as well as.planning with campuses and departments.
"We should have budgets for them to complete and turn back in to us," Greer said.
Once the campus and department budgets are returned in April, the district will incorporate those into the overall budget.
"We'll also start putting in some of those fixed cost budget line items like the appraisal district, utilities, just some of those routine, every year budget items," said Greer. "April is also when we'll receive our preliminary property values form the Cooke County appraisal district, and that's really when we can begin. We'll have our projections for the state revenue, and with those property projections we can really have that revenue for our local and really begin the revenue process."
The district should have a good estimate on salary projections and potential raises in May. The board will host budget workshops in June and July and have a final budget in August.
Election
Two seats on the school board are up for election on May 4: seat four, currently held by Nathan Dempsey, and seat five, currently held by Laura Otts.
Candidate packets can be picked up and filed at the GISD Administration building until February 16 at 5 p.m.
