Questions surrounding funding aviation scholarship arise in budget committee meeting

May 13—The Cumberland County Board of Education's budget committee discussed the need for funding a $60,000 aviation scholarship for four students and the funding for the Career and Technical Student Organizations' travel to competitions.

The aviation scholarship grants four students the opportunity to earn their private pilot's license. The scholarship offers a maximum of $15,000 per student for a total of $60,000. This scholarship pays the full cost of earning a private pilot's license. Leslie Eldridge, the college, career & technical education director for Cumberland County schools, asked for an additional $10,000 to pay for "an increase in the number of students involved in the CTSOs.

"Anytime that we complete a grant at the district level it is always our intention to sustain especially exponential amounts of funding related to the grants," said Eldridge. "Sustainability in this case is a big piece of the grant in order to continue providing opportunities to our students in order to produce a strong workforce."

The Tennessee Department of Education invested $30 million in grant money to fund the Innovative High School Models grant for 21 school districts in Tennessee. Cumberland County high schools received a grant for $1 million to fund the aviation program scholarship due to the need in the aviation workforce, said Eldridge.

Since the state grant was depleted, the CTE department has not received any additional grant money. The CTE department asked the school board budget committee to pick up the funding for the aviation scholarship.

Eldridge explained to the board that the state receives the funding from the Perkins grant, which mandates that the students are actively involved in participating in the CTSO such as FFA; Family, Career and Community Leaders of America; Health Occupations Students of America; Future Business Leaders of America; and Skills USA in order to continue to receive the grant. There is a line item in the budget to include funds for the CTSO student travel funds.

Board Chairwoman Teresa Boston, 8th District, and Robert Safdie, 2nd District, questioned the need to fund the $60,000 scholarship and the CTSO travel funds. Confusion seemed to surround this conversation as to which program needed full funding from the budget committee and which received funding from the federal Perkins grant and supplements from the budget committee.

"So what is the rationale for funding four students $70,000+ when our band competition we only could spend $1,500?" asked Safdie.

The discussion was not resolved.

The line-by-line discussion of the budget draft also included the following.

The budget committee received an additional $12,000 to the TISA estimated fund. This line item was agreed upon by Kim Bray, the school district's chief operations officer.

The budget committee altered the funding for the four current alternative school teachers. Boston asked Bray to review this with her at a later time.

The budget committee reduced the number of preschool classrooms from 12 to 11 due to a decrease in funding. The budget committee removed one teacher, one assistant and all associated fees. It was decided that supplementing the Baby Birds grant would be a future topic of discussion for a future budget.

The Homestead Elementary School safety plan was discussed on May 8 in an informational presentation. The budget committee decided to add a note to line 707 building improvements under capital outlay in the budget to designate funds toward improving the safety of the school. The phases of this plan include ultimately making the school one building as the goal.

To temporarily aid the safety of the students, the safety plan would like to fence the border of the back of the school and transplant the playgrounds in the back of the school within the fenced area, pending board approval. It has not been decided yet where or when the funds would be placed to use for this project.

The budget committee decided to remove the money allotted for furniture for four classrooms for this year with intentions to put it in the rotation when they look at the maintenance plan to add it to the budget later. The budget committee discussed potentially adding it to the renovation costs.

As of May 8, the budget draft maintains a 3% required reserve and has approximately $1 million in the fund balance above the reserve level.

The meeting also discussed the athletics request for a full-time countywide athletics director with taxes and benefits for $75,000, four middle school basketball supplements for $14,000, an athletic tracking system for $50,000 and an athletic field survey for Stone and Martin Elementary Schools for $10,267.20.

The budget committee will reconvene Wednesday, May 15, at 2:30 p.m. to discuss the proposed final budget to present to the County Commission's budget committee on June 6.

Visit www.youtube.com/watch?v=AA95vr0kTTo to view the budget meeting.