CCISD trustees approve retention pay for district staff

By BRITTANY FHOLER 

Cove Leader-Press 

Copperas Cove Independent School District employees will see some additional funds in their December 2020 paycheck, after the CCISD board approved a resolution regarding a one-time retention incentive for staff during its meeting on Tuesday evening.

The district will provide a one-time payment to be paid to all individuals prior to Sept. 1 of this year and who remain employed by the district as of Dec. 18. 

The payment will be $1,000 for regular, full-time employees and $500 for regular, part-time employees. 

When the district started the budget process earlier in the year, the impact of COVID-19 on public education funding going into the 2020-2021 school year was unknown, said CCISD superintendent Joe Burns. 

“There were rumors that everybody would take a 10 percent cut,” Burns added. “There were rumors that they were going to turn around and back up on foundation school program allotment for school districts, and so we were very uncertain as to what we would be able to do for staff, however, we knew that we were going to have fund balance, at least an initial fund balance- we’ll know what that is in January- and that we had a healthy fund balance.”

In the time since the budget was approved, the Texas Education Agency has provided some relief to school districts by allowing them to use their attendance rates from the 2019-2020 school year for the first 18 weeks of the 2020-2021 school year. This decision by TEA will help to moderate any state funding losses due to the pandemic.

 CCISD also finished the 2019-2020 school year with more revenue than expenses.

As a result, the district proposed a one-time payment to be made to each CCISD employee. 

This will cost the district a total amount of $1,394,809.50 with Employer Medicare included. 

Two board members were also sworn in at Tuesday’s meeting. 

Dr. Karen Harrison and John Gallen each took their oaths of office, administered by Judge Bill Price. 

Harrison has been a board member since 2011. Gallen is taking the space on Place 6 previously occupied by long-time board member Jim Copeland, who decided not to run for reelection. Both Harrison and Gallen ran unopposed this election. 

The board also approved the election of the board officers, electing Joan Manning to be board president, Inez Faison to be board vice president and Harrison to be the board secretary. 

Prior to the meeting, the board held a small going away party for Copeland. 

“I’ll miss the kids, and I’ll miss the board, because it’s like family,” Copeland said. “You’re going to miss them. I’m open to anything I can do to help them.”

Copeland said that the board was in great hands with John Gallen. 

“They’ve got a great new man,” Copeland said. “In fact, when I ran against him last time, if I hadn’t been running against him, I’d have voted for him, so they stepped up with John. I’ll miss it, but I’ll be around.”

With Gallen taking Copeland’s seat on the dais, the board moved onto approving the Consent Agenda, which included authorizing the final payment for the completion of the renovations and additions to the Copperas Cove ISD District Training Facility and Crossroads High School by BWC Education Group. The final payment due to BWC Education Group was $144,967.10, and the final cost to the district for this project was $2,899,341.82, which is $16,348.18 under the approved budget.

The board also formally accepted two donations. The Copperas Cove Education Foundation donated $11,874.16 to go to teacher grants. The second donation, which was not originally on the meeting agenda, was from the City of Copperas Cove for $115,000. 

The donation was part of emergency funds received by the city in relation to COVID-19, according to Superintendent Dr. Joseph Burns. 

“The city was going to have to return a significant amount of funds, and they can share those with the school district, and so they shared those to help us purchase technology,” Burns said. 

The district received the check on Monday and wanted to add that to board’s packet for approval so the district can use the funds next month. 

“We appreciate for the city rather than returning money that they would share it with the school district and it’s certainly a permissible use of those funds, so we want to say thank you to Mayor Diaz and to Ryan Haverlah, city manager, and also to Gary Young who headed up the effort by the city for COVID, and then he and Kim Blaylock, who works for us and deals with federal programs and all of that in COVID emergency management funds, worked together to make sure that those funds would come to CCISD, so we owe a debt of gratitude to those folks, and we’re very thankful to the city for sharing those resources with us,” Burns said.