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Joe Tagliente Jr. suggested that cost-cutting solution at the board's Sept. 18 meeting because he believes the Boone County Schools administration wastes tens of thousands of dollars each year by taking its maintenance vehicles to private mechanics.
Tagliente, a former Boone County Schools transportation director, reiterated that point Monday inside the conference room at the Boone County Schools operations complex.
"That isn't small change," he said of the $105,629 Boone County Schools has spent on service and repairs for its maintenance vehicles since 2003, including $6,919 since July 1. "It adds up over a few years.
"I think it's a terrible waste of taxpayers’ money."
His colleagues disagreed, however.
President Gary Woodrum, Vice President Danny Cantley, Bob Brown and Mark Sumpter voted against the move, which failed by a 4-1 margin. Tagliente was the only board member to vote for it.
"This is my turf now," Woodrum, who is the parts and service director at Stephens Auto Center, told the crowd before he explained his position on the issue.
Woodrum has 27 years of experience in his field, and he has managed fleets of vehicles three times as large as Boone County Schools' during that time.
Woodrum said the answer isn't taking the high-mileage maintenance vehicles to the bus garage for service and repairs. Instead, the solution is replacing the old ones with new ones because those vehicles would need only routine maintenance.
That, he said, would save more money in the long run.
Boone County Schools maintenance director Andy Dolan agreed.
“They are working on junk,” Dolan told the Coal Valley News last week.
Eight of the 24 maintenance vehicles have more than 200,000 miles, including three with more than 400,000 miles.
“If they would buy new vehicles, they wouldn’t be spending huge sums of money on big-money items such as transmissions," Dolan said. "They would be doing routine maintenance and it wouldn’t cost them that much.”
The preliminary plan calls for Dolan to purchase two or three new vehicles each year for a few years until the entire fleet is updated, Woodrum said.
Sumpter said he worried that Boone County Schools bus garage supervisor Luther Eversole and his staff would be unable to handle the additional workload if the board members approved the measure.
"It seems like it would be hard to give the same attention to the buses and the maintenance vehicles," Sumpter said.
Sumpter also said he didn't want the school board to "set a precedent for micromanagement in the maintenance department or any other departments."
That comment from Sumpter echoed the sentiments of Superintendent Steve Pauley, who told the Coal Valley News last week that he believes Dolan should decide where to send the vehicles for service and repairs.
“It should be his call,” Pauley said. “It is his responsibility to make sure the maintenance department employees can get to their jobs and get their jobs done. We need those vehicles up and running. He feels like he can achieve that quicker if he doesn’t have to wait on the bus garage.
“We operate an annual budget of $42 million here, so we aren’t talking about a significant amount of money,” he added. “We are paying for service. We get it done immediately. We still have to buy the parts either way. This way, we don’t have to wait for service.”
Cantley's concern was the possibility of having to add another person to Eversole's staff to help handle the extra work.
Instead of saving money, the school board "would double our costs," Cantley said.
Tagliente didn't share their concerns, though.
The maintenance vehicles were serviced and repaired at the bus garage when he was the transportation director, he noted. That changed when Pauley became superintendent and Dolan became maintenance director, he said.
“We always took the maintenance vehicles to the bus garage before that," Tagliente said.
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Board members voted 4-1 to direct the superintendent "to prepare and reduce to writing, reasons and supporting data" concerning the possible reconfiguration of Ashford-Rumble and Nellis elementary schools.
Brown cast the only dissenting vote.
Board members want more information about the possibility of using one of the schools for the lower grades (pre-kindergarten through second, for example) and using the other school for the higher grades (third through sixth, for example).
"I think it would be better off for their education," Woodrum said.
Ashford-Rumble and Nellis elementary schools currently have split-grade classrooms because their enrollments have decreased dramatically. That means fourth- and fifth-graders share a classroom in order to fill it, for example.
"We don't want to close or consolidate the schools," Woodrum said.
"If this would go through, we would have full classrooms at both schools in all grades," he added.
Woodrum said the school board would host community meetings before its members consider any action.
"We're just trying to do what's right for the schools and the students," he said.
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Pauley presented an expansion proposal for Brookview Elementary School to the state School Building Authority on Friday.
Pauley said the multi-million dollar project would add seven classrooms, plus additional space for physical education. It would cost $2,884,930, he said.
Pauley said the expansion is necessary because overcrowding has caused problems at Brookview Elementary School. He said the school must add more space before it can hire more teachers.
School Building Authority officials will interview Pauley and Woodrum in November, then make a decision in December.
"We feel very confident in that project," Pauley said.
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Assistant Superintendent Lisa Beck said federal officials are conducting on-site evaluations for Boone County Schools' Title I, Title II, Title IV and Title V programs this week.
"They want to see how well we are doing with the federal monies for those programs," she said.
The federal officials will evaluate only nine elementary schools in regard to their Title I programs, Beck said. However, the federal officials will examine all of the county schools in regard to their Title II, Title IV and Title V programs, she said.
The last on-site evaluations for Boone County Schools occurred in 2004, Beck said.
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Assistant Superintendent John Hudson said the state Department of Education has designated Ashford-Rumble Elementary School as a West Virginia Exemplary School for the 2007-08 term.
According to Office of Education Performance Audits standards, a school must meet high levels of student proficiency on the West Virginia Educational Standards Test (WESTEST), in core subjects and on writing assessments to receive exemplary status. A school also must meet a student attendance rate of at or above 94 percent.
Hudson said Ashford-Rumble students combined to post proficiency scores of 84.8 percent in reading and 89.1 percent in math on the WESTEST. The former is four points above the state average, he said; the latter is 13 points above the state average.
State Superintendent Dr. Steven L. Paine will visit the school next month to recognize its achievement, Hudson said.
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The board's next meeting is scheduled for Oct. 16 at 7 p.m. in the conference room of the operations complex in Foster.
Contact Managing Editor Jacob Messer at jacobmesser@coalvalleynews.com or 369-1165.
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