BCS discusses vouchers, routine audits

In addition to the new STEAM Honors Program being rolled out for the upcoming school year, vouchers among were the key topics at the Feb. 19 work session for the Bartlett school board.

Bryan Woodruff, vice chairman of the Bartlett school board and its liaison to the Tennessee Legislative Network (TLN), said state legislators will be looking at 321 education-related bills this session.

TLN is the group of school board representatives that sets the legislative agenda for the Tennessee School Boards Association (TSBA).

TSBA is the largest non-private lobbying body in the state. Woodruff said it has not yet released its positions on this session’s education-related bills.

He noted that one hot topic will be the use of school vouchers, which lets parents divert the state funds that would normally go to a local public school for their children and use those funds as a credit at private schools.

“Obviously, the risk there is that it encourages the privatization of education,” Woodruff said.
He said competing with private schools for educational dollars can divert focus and resources away from a public school’s focus on the quality of its education. Details on the TSBA’s opposition to school vouchers are online at tsba.net/Documents/SchoolVouchers.

In other business

The board agreed to place the following items on the agenda for the next business meeting:

• BCS student activity fund auditing: The school board has completed the request for proposal (RFP) process to identify the firm that will conduct audits on student activity funds at each of BCS’s 11 schools. Superintendent David Stephens recommended selecting Watkins Uiberall PLLC of Memphis, which bid a total cost of $26,400. That firm also will complete the district’s general fund audit through the city for $15,000, as well as $4,000 for a single audit of the federal funds.
• GASB: The Bartlett school district has the opportunity to join a TSBA trust known as the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) 45 Trust now that accounting changes require school districts to carry unfunded liabilities on their books. Superintendent Stephens recommended taking this step. Joining it is not an obligation to add funds immediately, he said. It is just an opportunity to invest any funds that the district sets aside for that purpose. The trust’s investments have been earning between 6 and 11 percent over the past several years. The committment is a two-year membership, but there are no minimum contribution standards.
• Board meetings: The board reviewed a list of BCS board meetings planned for the 2015-2016 school year.
• Transfer policy: The board had the second reading of changes to policy 6019 about transfers within the system. The changes are just designed to get the policy for in-district transfers in line with out-of-district transfers, Stephens said.

See a related story from this same meeting about management of snow days.

Written by Carolyn Bahm, Express editor. Contact her at (901) 433-9138 or via email to bartlett.editor@journalinc.com.