Part 2: Pocahontas BOE’s January 23rd Meeting –PCHS Athletic Fund Hurting

Part 2: Pocahontas BOE’s January 23^rd Meeting –PCHS Athletic Fund Hurting

Part 1 of the January 23^rd Pocahontas County Board of Education Meeting covered the debate over a proposed seven period schedule for PCHS next year. Also at that meeting, PCHS Vice-Principal Kristy Tritapoe asked the Board for financial help to avert a looming shortage in the school’s General Athletic Fund. The School’s General Athletic Fund comes from ticket sales for games and pays for all the equipment, uniforms and officiating expenses for all the school’s sports. Each sports team maintains their own fund which is raised by fund raising and from the concession money.  Those team funds pay for each team’s bus costs but do not provide funds to the General Athletic Fund. Vice-Principal Tritapoe describes the current financial crisis faced by the General Athletic Fund.

“Right now in the General Athletic Fund there’s about eighty-one hundred dollars” Tritapoe informed the board. “The girls’ basketball has not done so well this year, so they have not brought in a lot of ticket sales, which hurts my General Athletic Fund. A couple of times they brought in maybe four hundred and fifty bucks – officials are three hundred and thirty-five.  Boys basketball doing real well and they make six or seven hundred dollars a game. So they are covering their officials and making some money. Baseball and softball: Right now with the schedule I have for baseball and softball there are twenty-three home games. For the officials, I just estimated a hundred and fifty dollars per game, so if there is a double header it’s going to be more. For twenty-three games your looking at three thousand, four hundred and fifty bucks. If I take that out of what is in the General fund right now, that ends my budget at four thousand five hundred and fifty dollars. That is not enough to start football season and soccer season.”

Board member Joe Walker said the Board had discussed this at their recent budget work session and has some ideas in mind. Board President Grimes suggested that non-profitable sports teams may have to contribute to the General Athletic Fund if they wish to continue as a sport. The Board will invite the coaches of the various PCHS sports teams to their next Board Meeting to discuss this issue. They changed the date and time of that meeting to accommodate the coaches’ attendance. That meeting will now be held on the Presidents Day holiday, Monday February 20^th starting at 4 p.m. at the Board Conference Room.

Tritapoe also said that she and Principal Riley are also concerned about the lack of monitoring capability in the hallways during school. They suspect that illegal things are being passed between students in the hallways and bathrooms, but do not have the staff for sufficient monitoring of this. She and Riley asked for the Board’s help with this, although acknowledging that the financial situation the Board faces may make this difficult to fix.

In other actions, Superintendent Beam reported to the Board that they should consider making a “major improvement application” to the SBA to replace the sewer system at the high school.  Such application must be made before March 1^st. Any other type of SBA application must be in by June 30^th..

Principal Dustin Lambert of Marlinton Middle School asked the Board for permission to install on the campus a large “High Tunnel” greenhouse donated to the school by the WV Department of Agriculture. Margaret Worth, who teaches Horticulture at the school, said she has found resources to install and operate the high tunnel without any cost to the Board. Two students, Ryan Robertson and John Fitzgerald also spoke enthusiastically about helping out with the high tower.

The Board approved routine financial reports – budget reconciliations & adjustments, vender and purchasing card expenses and payroll. They also authorized Ruth Bland to sign legal documents on behalf of the Board pertaining to a specific U.S. Department of Agriculture Grant.

They approved Shannon Alderman and Gina Hardesty as volunteer basketball coaches at Hillsboro Elementary.

The Board then went into a closed Executive Session and upon returning they approved the personnel agenda which can be found with this story on our website, “alleghenymountainradio.org”

During the Matters of the Board portion of the meeting, Board Member Steve Tritapoe said there was a rumor going around that employee contracts would be terminated early, and he wanted the public and their employees to know that rumor is entirely false.