School Board introduces new Director of Finance; grants and approvals
The Hancock County Board of Education met on Thursday, May 25th. Trey Anderson, Assistant Principal for HCMS, was introduced as the new Chief Financial Officer/Director of Finance, as of Thursday, May 25th. Kara Eckles resigned from the position. “She’s going back out to work in the private sector,” Superintendent Robby Asberry said.
Financial Report
“For the month of April 2023,” Anderson reported, “the balance on-hand at the beginning of the month was $7,004,789.62. The total receipts for the month were $653,414.79. Total expenditure was $1,458,514.12. With a close of $6,189,853.83.”
Approval of Insurance
The board approved insurance for: General Property, Workers’ Compensation, Cyber (cyberterrorism) and Casualty & Liability. “Church Mutual is what brought your package under one umbrella,” Anderson said. “It’s a 5 percent increase. With that taken into account, $12M increase in values. Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) requires you to insure buildings with a certain limit and those went way up this year. If the values didn’t go up 12 percent, you wouldn’t have solved that problem, which is really good.
Last year you won the Destiny Award with KEMI (KY Employers’ Mutual Insurance).
KEMI is the largest work comp carrier in the state. They have about 24,000 policy holders. Every year, they pick the best of the best of their clients to give an award to. I’ll tell you how good it is. They only pick 20. So, that’s one tenth of one percent. That’s a pretty good company. You all are the only school board in the state that got one. That shows you just how excellent your credit to safety and loss prevention within your work comp is.
When Nick (Boling, Assistant Superintendent) and I first started working our work comp, etc. together, it was $130,000 and this year it’s $40,000. So, keep up the good work, all of you. Safety and loss prevention starts from the top down. The difference is all of you. That’s you and Nick, the board, all the teachers and faculty, everybody. I’m pleased with the renewal and I appreciate what you all are doing.”
Stonework
The board approved stonework to be added to the concession stand and bathrooms at the new football stadium on HCMS/HCHS campus. Johnson Plumbing (Ricky Johnson) is completing the concession stand and bathroom renovation, along with the beautiful stonework.
“With the original bid,” Asberry said, “we took some of the things out. Then, after looking at that beautiful stone wall, I thought that it would be awesome to have that matching stone at the bottom of the concession stand and at the restrooms. It would be $14,800 more. I recommend we do it right and make it something the students and the whole community can be proud of. That would be my recommendation that we also purchase the stones.”
Grant for HCMS SRO
Asberry said that a COPS (Community Oriented Policing Services) Grant has been applied for and, if approved, will provide the dollars needed for an additional School Resource Officer (SRO) for the new school year.
They are complying with KY State law, in that HCMS/HCHS is one campus and there is one SRO assigned to it, but the goal is to have one SRO for each school and if the grant is approved, the board can hire one more SRO. “We were wanting to have one for each school,” Asberry said, “and we were wanting the middle school to have their own. We don’t know if we’ve been approved for that, but it would pretty much pay for an SRO if we get that grant.”
Currently, Deputy Butch Garst, Senior SRO at HC Schools, is the SRO for HCMS/HCHS campus, Deputy Frank Howard is the SRO at NHES and Mark Powers is SRO at SHES.
