DCHS to Launch Girls Volleyball Program Starting with 2024-25 Season

February 9, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

Girls Volleyball is coming to DeKalb County High School!

During Thursday night’s regular monthly meeting, the Board of Education voted to launch a high school girls volleyball program beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

The estimated startup cost of the program is $12,460 according to administration officials at DCHS which includes the expense of home and away jerseys and basic equipment such as volleyballs, etc. The board has not yet officially named a head coach or assistant although Tigerette head softball Coach Danielle Horton is a candidate.

DCHS Principal Bruce Curtis presented the request to the Board Thursday night with a written proposal prepared by Assistant Principal Thomas Cagle.

Under TSSAA Classification, the DCHS Volleyball program will be in District 7AA with Livingston Academy, Cumberland County, Stone Memorial, Upperman, and Watertown.

The volleyball schedule will follow the same as girls soccer. The season will officially begin on July 29,2024 with the regular season to start August 19, 2024 . All district matches must be completed by October 11, 2024. The playoffs and state championships will conclude on October 25, 2024.

The volleyball team will have the option of playing up to 35 games with four tournaments.

The DCHS girls volleyball team will play their games and practices at the DCHS gym and or the DeKalb Middle School auxiliary gym.

Director of Schools Patrick Cripps said volleyball would eventually have to be expanded to include girls teams at DeKalb Middle and DeKalb West School to serve as feeder teams to the high school program to make it more competitive.

February 9, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

Postponed!

The Board of Education Thursday night had planned to discuss and possibly act on whether to grant the county’s request for $2 million from the school system’s fund balance reserves to help fund construction of a new 800 student Pre-K to 2nd grade school to replace the existing Smithville Elementary complex. But since not all seven members were in attendance at the meeting Thursday night, the board voted to postpone any action until all seven members could be present. Board members absent were Jason Miller and Eric Ervin.

“I move that we remove item number 2 (consider and act on the county’s request for $2 million) from the agenda due to all of our board members not being present. I think with an issue of this magnitude, all of our board members need to be present,” said Board Chairman Shaun Tubbs.

In addition to Tubbs, the other four members in attendance, Danny Parkerson, Jim Beshearse, Jamie Cripps, and Alan Hayes, voted in favor of the motion to postpone action. No date has yet been set to revisit the issue. The next regular meeting is March 14.

During a workshop session, prior to the regular monthly meeting Thursday night, Director of Schools Patrick Cripps echoed concerns he raised last fall when the county first proposed this idea of the school system putting in $ 2 million toward a new school construction project. Cripps said his primary worry is that taking $2 million from the school system’s $9.9 million fund balance or reserve account would be digging a little too deeply, especially at a time when the school district has other needs which require funding. At least two board members, Parkerson and Beshearse also expressed concerns. Board Chairman Tubbs said while he doesn’t like the idea, he might support it if the board could add a condition upon approval that the county commission agree to fund the new school construction plan as proposed by the school board without trying to downsize the project or make changes.

“Where I stand on this matter, as I said during the workshop, is the fact that I have been part of this school board for ten years now and we have had three different county commissions that we have worked with and put in separate proposals as to what was needed and those proposals have been shot down almost every time (by previous county commissions),” said Board Chairman Tubbs. “In this case, I would be willing to take $2 million out of the reserves to put forth toward building a school, if we were able to build the school that the school board is wanting to build. I don’t want to put the $2 million toward that and then have the county commission go back and cut it (school construction plan) down to something that wouldn’t even be functional for the school system,” Tubbs said.

In recent years, Director Cripps and the Board of Education have built up a healthy fund balance or reserve due in part to financial resources like the federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) made possible by the American Rescue Plan in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak. But now with ESSER funds dwindling, Cripps said needs previously funded by ESSER will have to be borne locally.

“Those ESSER dollars have given us some extra programs we have been able to do like extra tutoring and extra professional development for our teachers but now that this ESSER money is rolling off, these are projects we will have to start funding out of our budget with local and state dollars,” said Director Cripps.

Plus, Cripps said the new state funding formula for schools has created some uncertainty.

“Under the former Basic Education Program (BEP) formula, once you (school district) got your money, it was set for the year. You didn’t lose it. It was locked in. It was yours,” explained Director Cripps. “But now with this new Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) formula, the amount of state funding we get during the year can change. They (state) pull our (attendance or enrollment) numbers every month. They see how many kids we have, what programs they are in, and what categories they are falling in to determine how much money we need to be allocated based on the number of students enrolled”.

Cripps said the TISA funding formula is weighted under which the school district can earn more state funds based on its number of economically disadvantaged and special education students, kids in foster care, those who are classified as homeless, and qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.

According to Cripps, the school’s fund balance, although currently strong at almost $10 million, was once more than $12 million, but the school board has spent money from it in recent years for local teacher and support staff pay raises as well as capital outlay projects without having to ask the county commission for more local property tax dollars. Cripps said if the school board grants another local pay raise in 2024-25 to staff, it would draw down the fund balance or reserves even more but in order to be able to keep as many good teachers in the system as possible, Cripps said the raises should keep coming when possible for the local school system to be competitive with other districts because there is a shortage of teachers across the state. Already, Cripps said DeKalb County has seen several educators who live here, leave employment with the local school system to take teaching jobs elsewhere, like Rutherford County where they can make more money.

Although he supports whatever decision the Board of Education makes on this issue, Cripps said he fears withdrawing another $2 million from the reserves to help build a new school, would put other needs at risk without more local funding. “I want a school just as much as the next person, but we can’t sacrifice our people (employees) for a building. You could have the prettiest school building in the world but if you can’t pay them (employees) you won’t be able to fill it up with quality teachers. And if we take another $2 million out of our reserves we may eventually get down to the point where we are going to have to come back to the county commission to ask for more local tax dollars for our budget so we can continue paying our employees and for other needs because the costs of everything from school buses to food supplies continues to skyrocket. When I became director the cost of a bus was $95,000 and today its up to $140,000,” said Cripps.

Three months ago, members of the county commission and board of education met together in an informal workshop setting to work toward some funding arrangement on the project. In October 2022 architects estimated the cost to build a new Smithville Elementary School was $46,199,875 at that time. If and when constructed, the new school would be built on property purchased by the board of education a few years ago which is adjacent to the Northside Elementary School campus near the Family Medical Center.

According to County Mayor Matt Adcock and the county’s fiscal agent Steve Bates, a $40 million school construction project could be funded without a property tax increase or even a wheel tax, using available local option sales tax funds and interest income on bond proceeds, but only if the school board is willing to make a one-time contribution of two million dollars from its $10 million fund balance reserves. The county would also need a commitment from the cities and school board to extend the existing sales tax agreements between the parties which expire July 16, 2037. Under those agreements, the cities turn over to the county for schools a greater percentage of their local option sales tax collections than they would otherwise be required to do. That money goes into what is called the Local Purpose Tax Fund for Schools to help fund school operation and debt.

“The best-case scenario would be to extend the sales tax agreements between the county, cities, and school board (beyond 2037) in order to do 30-year bonds but do an emission of bonds to build the school and amortize it over a 15-year period with a $ 2 million contribution from the Board of Education from their fund balance together with a contribution from local purpose (local option sales tax fund),” explained Bates.

“Under this plan, we (county) would take $5.6 million (from local purpose/sales tax fund) together with the school’s $2 million contribution and together with bond proceeds issue an amount of bonds to build the school. By amortizing it quickly over 15 years then it opens up future borrowing capacity for another school to be built once that issue is paid off,” said Bates.

February 8, 2024
By: Dwayne Page

The DCHS Tigers and Lady Tigers will travel to Crossville tonight (Thursday, February 8) to face the Stone Memorial Panthers and Lady Panthers.

The girls game will tip off at 6 p.m. followed by the boys game and WJLE will broadcast both LIVE.

In the last meeting on January 27 in Smithville, the Tigers lost to the Panthers 68 to 57 while the Lady Tigers were defeated 63 to 56.

The Tigers are now 10-16 on the season and 1-8 in the district. The Lady Tigers own a record of 9-17 overall and 0-9 in district play.

Meanwhile the regular season finale will be Saturday, February 10 as DeKalb County finishes with makeup games at Warren County starting with the girls game at 3 p.m. followed by the boys contest. Again, WJLE will broadcast LIVE.

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