TEACHERS FAREWELL

By LYNETTE SOWELL Cove Leader-Press The Copperas Cove Independent School District board of trustees honored the CCISD’s 2015 retirees who have accumulated 252 years of experience in education, with 183 of those in CCISD. The board voted to reject all bids for repairs to campus roofs damaged by hail from storms in the spring of 2014. Roofs currently include seven campuses, as well as the press box at S.C. Lee’s Hanke Stadium. The district is still negotiating with the Risk Management department of the Texas Association of School Boards and expects to resolve all insurance claims soon. Also at Tuesday’s meeting, the board approved the purchase of new choir curriculum for CopperasCove Junior High and Copperas Cove High School in  the amount of $26,309.94 of budgeted funds. The board also approved changes to its contract with Central Texas College for the 2015-2016 academicyear.  “We can now offer some few of the programsonce offered by CTC,” Burns told the board. CCHS will now offer a Serve Safe Management  Leve  Certification to students in the culinary arts program. The high school will be able to offer two certifications for welding students, the OSHA Safety  Standards Certificate and the TACKER Certificate forAWS Welding. Burns and the board also discussed the upcoming  Impact-Aid-related conference schedule for the 2015- 2016 school year. Estimated cost is approximately  $40,000 for board members and staff to attend seven events hosted by organizations like the National Association of Federally Impacted Schools, the Texas As-sociation of Federally ImpactedSchools, and the Military Impacted Schools Association. Burns said the district had cut its travel spending by 20 percent to lead the way for other departments  making cuts, and the district is not planning to changethat $40,000. The board approved  that planned travel. Previously, the spending had been around $50,000 for Impact Aid-related travel. The board also approved a 2 percent of midpoint increase for those employees whose salaries were frozen and at the top of the pay scale, and whose increases were not included in the recent increase approved at last month’s board meeting, along with a 2 percent increase of salary for district superintendent Joe Burns. The  ncrease, a first for Burns since he was hired in 2012, amounts to a bump of $3,250. School board president Joan Manning said the increase for Burns was the board’s idea, and that Burns had declined any raises, but this time around,the board insisted. The cost of the increase for the employees at the top of their pay grades amounts to about $13,000