Moulton ISD hears Live Oak financial presentation

Moulton ISD board of trustees heard from a representative with Live Oak financial services at the Feb. 21 meeting.

Joey Dawson, director from Live Oak Public Finance, PLLC., gave a presentation detailing how property values over time has affected the local tax rate and described possible ways the district could leverage money earned.

“The reason that he came out (at the board meeting) was to try to help us figure out ways to keep more of local money local,” Superintendent Renee Fairchild said. “There is a couple of ways to do this including increasing our attendance rate and making sure we have more students that are enrolled. Some of our programs are also weighted and we get more money based on participation in those programs like CTE and CCMR. Those dollars stay local, and we control those dollars."

The sale of buses can also assist with this.

A graph was also presented showing a revenue breakdown of how much money comes into the school district.

“There’s such a growth in the area of minerals,” Fairchild said. “72% of the income that comes into the school right now is from the property taxes associated with minerals.”

The income breakdown also showed that 9% of the money comes from utilities, commercial is 6%, residential is 4%, and other revenue sources including land is 9%.

The district aims to have additional information meetings with Dawson in the future.

“There’s several school districts around that are using his firm,” Fairchild said. “The schools he worked with in the past has had good results. Dawson is very people oriented and he’s going to always look out for the taxpayer.”

Outside of the report, the district had to decide on whether or not they should have chaplains serve as volunteers on campus.

The vote was in response to a new law passed by the Legislature allowing unlicensed religious chaplains to serve in roles akin to school counselors and provide mental health services. Senate Bill 763, passed during the 88th Legislative Session, requires each school Board to take a record vote within six months of September 1, 2023 on whether or not they would allow chaplains to serve in this role.

Ultimately, the district has opted to take no action at this time on having chaplains serve as counselors.

“Ministers in our community may or may not know the way things work or what they can and can’t say to kids,” Fairchild said. “They just aren’t trained counselors. So, until we get more information from the state and more guidance on what they can and can’t do, I recommend we vote no policy at this time. I do want to say that there are some local pastors that have visited our campuses or come to lunch with the students. They can come as volunteers at any time, that’s already part of our policy. The difference in being a volunteer and being a chaplain is the ministering or the counseling aspect to it.”

Other items on the agenda included:

• The district had to decide whether to renew their liability insurance with the Texas Association of School Board risk management. TASB is raising the rates by $16,000 and the district needs to make sure that they are being fiscally responsible. They are looking at two other options.

• The district appointed Tiffany Janek, Penny Irwin, Victoria Ortiz, Randy Stevenson, and Angela Zumwalt to serve as textbook committee members for the school.

• Current enrollment numbers are 296. Five new students enrolled in the district.

• New window film installation has started at the school. This will be a two-week job.

• School buses will be getting new windshields.

• The Elementary School will host a book fair for the students starting the week of March 18.