No tax increase for Sumter County Schools

Published 10:09 am Wednesday, May 15, 2019

By Beth Alston

AMERICUS — The good news for Sumter County property owners is that the Sumter County Board of Education has a balanced budget for FY2020 and will require no property tax increase for the coming year. That, along with other matters, were discussed at Thursday’s board meeting. There are two public hearings planned for the FY2020 budget, which totals $41 million. The first is at noon, June 6, and the second is at 5:30 p.m. June 11, both at the Central Office, 100 Learning Lane. The budget will be formally adopt the budget during the June 13 board meeting which is also open to the public.

In other business at Thursday’s meeting, the board took the following actions.

  • Approved VolP (voice over internet protocol) service with Local Loop. The particulars of the bid, of $2,838 per month, are that if there is an outage in Atlanta, Local Loop’s Data Center in North Carolina will still provide connectivity for Sumter County Schools phones. Being that most of the current phones are nine or 10 years old, the new service will include 160 new phones, included in the cost. The new service will provide a yearly cost savings of $5,976 for the first three years, after which the school system will see a cost of savings of over $14,000, according to information provided by board member Sylvia Roland of the technology committee.
  • Approved June 17 as a date for whole board training with the Ignite College & Career Academy. Time is to be announced later.
  • Approved a field experience and internship agreement between the Sumter County School System and the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia on behalf of Georgia Southern University.
  • Approved the following personnel items:

— Retirement: Jon Rechtorovic

— Resignations: Michael Hoffpauir, Pushpa Rajan, Bangalore Arunkumar, Marigo Mathis, Brooks Robinson, Stephen Smith, Lawrence Wright, and Lydia Gunn

— Terminations: Lashana Green and Olivia Myers Leverette

— Transfers: Johnny Genwright, Brandon Goss, and Peggy Harris

— Employments: Justin McConnell, Eric Speakman, Kyle Sims, Melissa Horne, Kimberly Davis, Karen Layton, April Lake, Leonard Hosley, Jennifer Beck, Morgan Bush, Junnie McKay, and Jennifer Fowler

— Changes in employment status: Crystal Merrell-Calhoun, Vamsee Mallineni, and Leon Walker