At Thursday night’s Dallas County Schools Board of Education Meeting, Superintendent Hattie Shelton presented a plan of action to the school board to address concerns voiced by parents of Dallas County High School (DCHS) Students at the last board meeting.
The first point of Shelton’s plan is to work more closely with the administration at DCHS.
“That will start with us next week, sitting down, outlining who is responsible for what duties amongst the personnel who are there,” she said.
At the last board meeting, a parent voiced concerns that the administration of the school was difficult to reach, and tasks often went incompleted due to a lack of delegation.
“I will be the mentor for the principal this year,” said Shelton. “We will move forward.”
Shelton then encouraged all parents to contact her in the event that they have any questions or corcerns about matters at the school.
“We will then investigate and do what we have to do,” she said.
In order to address the concern of finances at Dallas County High School brought up at the last board meeting Shelton stated that in order to make sure the procedures in place to handle finances are adhered to, several audits will be performed across Dallas County schools.
“To ensure that our people are following procedures, we will be doing many audits of our campuses and they will be done on a rotating basis,” Shelton said.
She added that the audits would be performed by the Dallas County Schools local and General Bookkeeper.
Shelton stated that at Wednesday’s Dallas County Schools principals and administrators meeting, Chief School Financial Officer Shelia Purdy went over accounting guidelines with the schools principals and office administrators.
Shelton added that those present had to sign a form confirming that they participated and that failure to adhere to accounting guidelines would result in disciplinary action.
Moving on from finances, Shelton shared that the superintendent’s office would be involved with teacher observation moving forward.
“Another thing that we are planning on doing is being a part of instructional observations,” said Shelton. “To make sure that our kids are getting good, strong instruction and that there is now slacking off.”
Shelton explained that observation would be held three days per week to start and if things go well that they’ll “back off” but continue to monitor education practices in the classroom.
Shelton then informed the board that she will begin a student advisory board for Dallas County’s middle and high schools.
Shelton stated students for the advisory board would be picked by an application and interview process.
Shelton hopes that the student advisory board will allow her to interact directly with students to hear the issues that they face at schools.
She than stressed to parents that any time that their children see her that if they have a question or concern then they shouldn’t be afraid to share it.
“They can stop me if they’ve got an issue,” said Shelton.
Following the presentation of Shelton’s plan she invited the board to share any questions or comments they may have.
Board member Mark Story expressed his gratitude to Shelton for her thoughtful plan.
“Mrs. Shelton I appreciate your diligence,” he said.
School Board President Leroy Miles also expresses gratitude for Shelton’s plan to move forward and thanked her during the meeting.
“Mrs. Shelton I want to thank you for that plan of action that you’ve put in place, this board really appreciates you addressing those issues and those concerns of parents. You have a good plan in place,” he said.
Later in the meeting Shelton returned to the podium to discuss business.
“Last month I brought a request to purchase buses and we were planning on financing all 20 buses and making a first payment of $523,000,” said Shelton. “However, the state sent us a letter saying we could not do that with those funds and we had to outright purchase those six buses in order to finance the other 14.”
Shelton stated that the original cost for the 20 buses was $1,908,140 and that the new cost of the new cost of the 14 buses is around $1.3 million.
Shelton shared that a payment will not have to be made until September 2020.
Shelton recommended the board to approve to lease purchase agreement for the 14 buses and they then unanimously agreed to approve the motion.
Following Shelton’s proposal, the board unanimously elected to nominate board member Mamie Solomon as All-State School Board Member.