Picayune Separate Municipal School District Board of Trustees took care of some other business during their meeting held Tuesday evening.
During the meeting, they approved a motion to submit a refunding application for the Early Head Start program. While in discussion of that topic, Early Head Start Director Dr. Pam Thomas said the program is on a five-year grant cycle. Picayune’s program is currently on its third year in that cycle. As part of the cycle, audits are conducted regularly. Thomas said the most recent audit did not have any findings. Since that has been the case with this and every audit beforehand, Picayune’s program will move to automated funding for an additional five years. Recently all Head Start programs in the state were placed on the five-year cycle, meaning grants are no longer indefinite.
If an audit comes back with findings, then the program is placed on a plan of improvement. Thomas said Picayune’s Early Head Start program has never been placed on a program of improvement in the 16 years it has operated in Picayune.
In another matter, the district’s ERate Funding is being cut, which is federal funding provided to all schools to help with phone bills, both landline and cellular.
District Finance Director Lisa Persick said the district was receiving 90 percent reimbursement for their cellular and land line phone bills, but that funding is slowly being phased out. This year, they will receive 70 percent of that funding. Each year thereafter the funding will be cut by an additional 20 percent.
“It will eventually phase out,” Persick said.
During discussion of the matter board members asked if there was a way to cut their phone bills. Persick said four years ago district staff looked at the number of phone lines and disconnected the ones deemed unnecessary. Board members requested she reassess the number of lines to see if there are more that can be disconnected.
In another matter, the board approved a motion to enter into a three-year contract with Cunningham CPA out of Fairhope, Alabama. The firm will conduct audits for the district for fiscal years ending in June 2016, 2017 and 2018 at a cost of $15,000 per year.
The next school board meeting will be April 12 at 5:30 p.m.