By Crystal McGough, Editor
TRUSSVILLE – The Trussville City Schools Board of Education unanimously approved personnel recommendations from Superintendent Dr. Patrick Martin, which included hiring a new band director for Hewitt-Trussville High School Monday night, July 17, 2023.
HTHS Principal Aaron King was present at the meeting to introduce Mark Knauss as the school’s new band director.
“I’m really excited to be here,” Knauss said. “I think it’s a wonderful opportunity and a great community.”
Knauss comes to Hewitt from Thompson High School in Alabaster, where he was the Associate Director of Bands. Prior to that, he was Director of Bands at Mary G Montgomery High School in Mobile.
He is currently working on his doctorate in Music Education from William Carey University, which he said should be completed by the end of this year.
Dr. Martin also proudly announced that Jared Meads has been officially named Principal of Hewitt-Trussville Middle School. Meads was named Interim Principal at the June 26 meeting of the Board.
During the meeting, Dr. Martin, along with Assistant Principal Joy Young, recognized HTHS educators Jason and Christy Dooley for a $50,000 grant they were awarded for the high school’s Career Tech department.
“As you know, we’re getting a new space at the high school for career technical education, and so we needed some equipment to put in that space,” Young said. “Part of that space is going to be dedicated to the engineering academy – it will be an engineering lab space. Jason and his wife, Christy, worked really hard. They identified the equipment that we were going to need … and they really did the work on writing this grant. We are very excited. We have the equipment on hand, and we are ready, when that space is ready, to move that in.”
Chief Financial Officer Jim Kirkland led the Board and community members through a public hearing where he presented the first draft of the proposed budget for Trussville City School’s 2024 fiscal year.
“The state of Alabama requires each school system to do two public hearings a year, and our budget is due to the state on Sept. 15 … so tonight is our first public hearing,” Kirkland said.
The proposed budget shows that system’s total expected revenues are $66,204,793.37 and total expected expenditures are $64,994,939.12.
Kirkland said this first hearing is happening a little early in the year, so there are some estimations in the proposal due to certain federal and state allocations that the school system has not yet received.
“For the most part, this is our budget with some minor tweaks (to come),” he said.
The budget breaks down revenues and expenditures into five categories: Fiduciary Expendable Trust (clubs, booster groups, etc.); Capital Projects; Debt Service (the school system’s mortgage); Special Revenue; and General.
“Other than the 2% state raise and the few units that we’ve added at the various schools, this is a pretty level budget,” Kirkland said. “Operationally, what was budgeted last year was pretty much the same as what we’re budgeting this year. Very close budget to what ’23 looked like.”
Kirkland added that he’s anticipating Trussville City Schools to end the 2023 fiscal year with a $1.4 million rollover.
“Hopefully we’ll be even better that,” he said. “So, we’ll end the year strong as of right now.”
Under new business, the Board approved the TCS 2023-24 Salary Schedule, effective July 1, 2023, as well as the new TCS Student and Parent Handbook.
Assistant Superintendent of Student Services Dr. Rachel Poovey spoke on the new handbook.
“This was a collaborative process, and we appreciate that we had parents, administrators, teachers, all types of staff on this committee, but most helpful, honestly, was the student leadership team at Hewitt-Trussville High School who really reviewed some things and asked some good questions for us to go back and evaluate,” Poovey said. “We appreciated that support…
“The significant changes are that we just wanted to make it more readable for our families. We wanted to make sure they had the information they needed to register … but also when it came to the Code of Conduct, we defined each of those things that were minor to extreme offenses and made sure that parents (would) understand what those terms were.”
The TCS Board of Education typically meets in regular session on the third Monday of each month at 5 p.m. Board meetings are held at the TCS Board of Education/Central Office located at 476 Main Street and are open to the public and live-streamed. The livestream link is posted to the TCS website 15 minutes before the Board meeting begins.