Transparency was a major theme during District 4 Columbia County Board of Education (CCBOE) representative Katie Allen’s town hall at Grovetown Library, Tuesday evening. Allen invited her constituents and other Columbia Countians to discuss a series of issues and offer feedback.
During the meeting Allen responded to a question about her vote during the school board’s last work session meeting against issuing bonds to cover Harlem High School’s improvement projects, saying that while she supports the improvements, she aims to spark a more open discussion among the board members regarding the district’s finances.
Allen revisited a concern she expressed during that meeting, that the district’s bond debt is mounting faster than its SPLOST funds, and that her vote was regarding a proposal to take two more weeks to allow the CCBOE to examine the numbers further.
“I just want to make sure that we have a totally transparent discussion so that collectively as a community and as taxpayers, we are all watching our finances and watching where our taxpayer money is going, and watching how much debt we are gathering in comparison to how many SPLOST is going to take to pay off,” said Allen. “And I think two weeks of that discussion was not anything that would change the timeline.”
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Harlem High School principal Casey Dees made sure to emphasize the need for the improvements, noting especially the small classroom sizes, and the fact that the school’s core building has not been upgraded since 1982.
“As we grow, which Harlem’s always growing like no other — I think we all agree that it’s going to continue to grow over the next several years — we’re going to have to have some more room at some point,” said Dees.
Allen showed gratitude for Dees’ input, and said she looks forward to the board having conversations to figure out how to ensure projects like Harlem High’s improvements happen “in a way that we can balance, that we can afford to pay for it.”
Earlier in the meeting, Allen brought up the school district’s budget as another topic ripe for a more open discourse among her fellow board members.
“When we’re running a budget where we’re bringing in… $20 million more revenue throughout the year, and then that revenue’s being transferred to the building program, that’s something that needs to be discussed in public,” she said, so that the “public could collectively weigh in” on whether to the district spend surplus funds on the building program, or on other things such as hiring more paraprofessionals.
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Allen had begun the talk by raising the issue of parental rights policy, citing Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case for which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that school districts not permitting opt-outs from instruction involving LGBTQ-themed books violated parents’ free exercise of religion.
Allen indicated that developing policy considering the recent court ruling could help the district “get ahead” in situations where parents do seek to opt their children out of instruction with materials they may feel violate their beliefs.
“This policy is something that would be my next step,” said Allen, pending public approval.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
