Limestone County school board members voted 5-1 Tuesday to approve a new round of personnel actions during a regularly scheduled meeting at the Clinton Street Courthouse Annex.

Charles Shoulders, president of the board, provided the dissenting vote after board members rejected his motion to hold a separate vote regarding the termination of first-year Tanner Principal Louis Gordon.

Principal contracts

• Limestone County Career Technical Center — Vince Green

• Creekside Primary — Matt Scott

• East Limestone High — Louis Berry

• Sugar Creek Elementary — Cleo Miller

Probationary principal contracts

• Ardmore High — Glenn Bryant

• Limestone County Career Technical Center — John Wilson

• Creekside Elementary — Dana Rhinehart

• Elkmont Elementary — Haley James

• Johnson Elementary — Robbie Lauderdale

• Tanner Elementary — Angie Barnes

• Tanner High — Louis Gordon, terminated.

New teacher hires

• Elkmont Elementary — Penny Vincent, Title I teacher; Jacob Ryan, Title I history teacher

• Elkmont High — Samuel Wallace, science

• Blue Springs Elementary — Brittany Crowson, elementary teacher

• Johnson Elementary — Katherine Ikerman, special education

Melynda Wyatt, a special education teacher at Clements High School, resigned.

No teacher retirements were included on the agenda.

Alexis Hood, a psychometrist, was terminated. (A psychometrist is highly trained in administering and scoring various and tests and instruments that assess neuropsychological function.)

Financials

Chief School Financial Officer Kimberly Hubbard provided a brief budget report at the beginning of the meeting. So far this fiscal year, the district has spent $38.7 million and has collected $44.5 million in revenue. Due in part to recent state-approved school employee raises, the district’s one month operating budget has increased from $5.9 million to $6.4 million. Currently, the district has $2.5 million in reserve, which is 60 percent less than the amount mandated by the state.

Additional business

After some discussion, the board agreed to cut from 10 to 9 the contracts for information technology facilitators.

Board member Earl Glaze questioned the cost-cutting measure.

“So, if we are doing this to our tech facilitators, why aren’t we looking at athletic coaches?” Glaze asked. “If it is going to affect some, it needs to affect all.”

The board voted 4-2 for the “partial termination” of the ITF positions, with Glaze and Bradley Young dissenting.

Board members also raised concerns over the district’s plan to purchase Spanish and music textbooks for the 2018-2019 school year.

“If we are moving forward with the one-to-one initiative, shouldn’t we be looking at putting those textbooks online?” Anthony Hilliard asked.

Sisk said it was something they could look into, but only grades 5-10 currently have access to their own laptops.

The purchases of textbooks was approved 5-1, with Edward Winter dissenting.

The board also approved the 2019 graduation schedule.

Sisk said the majority of county high schools would continue to hold their graduations on campus, except for Clements High School. School officials at Clements asked to hold the ceremony at another location.

During the discussion of the 2019 graduation schedule, Glaze brought up the recent controversy over academic cords at Ardmore High School’s graduation.

Sisk said he was already working on drawing up a list of standards for future graduations.

Banks in schools

Jeff Hodges and Savannah Horn of First National Bank in Athens presented a preliminary plan to set up pop-up banks in all the county’s elementary schools. Students would be able to set up savings accounts and make regular deposits with bank tellers who would visit the schools on a regular basis.

“We want kids to learn to save at a young age and promote financial literacy,” Hodges said.

He added they hoped to open their first bank at Cedar Hill Elementary and then expand the program into all the elementary schools, with the potential of one day including the county’s high schools.