By Jennifer Middleton, Jefferson Jimplecute
Jefferson Independent School District received a clean bill of health for their 2019-20 finances during a regular meeting on Tuesday.
Mike Hallum with Knuckols, Duvall Hallum & Co. Certified Public Accountants of Marshall told the school board that the district’s finances as of Aug. 31, 2020, were clean and showed “no insufficiencies.”
“You were actually budgeted to go into the hole,” Hallum told the board, “but you came out better than your budget.”
Some of that is due to school closure due to COVID-19, he said, but that the district had done an excellent job of handling its finances in the midst of the pandemic.
Hallum said JISD’s total net position was $12.54 million, with total assets of $30,176,658.
In other business, the board voted to sell district-owned boat sheds at Crestwood Marina to Todd Winn for $5,000. Karen Jones, Marion County Tax Assessor-Collector, told the board the transaction had already gone before the commissioner’s court, which had approved it.
Superintendent Rob Barnwell said they had acquired the boat sheds due to non-payment of school taxes and that they had tried to auction them off this past spring, but had no takers.
Jones told the board Winn plans to dismantle them and move them to another location on the lake, but that he is waiting on approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to do so.
Dr. Lynn Phillips, JISD’s director of curriculum, also told the board that there were increases in literacy for kindergarten through first grade, as shown by regular Benchmark testing. She said that K-1 math showed increases and that the students were at 56%, with a goal of 58% and that first grade was at 62% with a goal of 70%.
The results also showed that second grade students were at 32% with a goal of 72%. When tested in November, the group had been at 46%. Phillips said the reduction was possibly due to the pandemic closures and that they were working intensely to help those students bring the numbers up to the goal.
Board members also approved the 2021-22 school calendar during.
The first day of school for students will be Aug. 18, 2021, and the last day will be May 26, 2022. School holidays will be November 22-26, December 20 through January 3 and March 14-18.
The board also approved a board election to be held May 1 for Places 6 and 7.
Up for re-election are J.P. Abernathy and Ned Fratangelo.
Those who wish to be considered for the position may do so through Friday, February 12.
Early voting will be held from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays at the JISD Administration Building, 1600 MLK Drive, Jefferson, Texas.