By Elaine Belcher

The Tuesday night meeting of the Johnson County School Board started out with a public meeting concerning the property tax increase to $.49 cents per $100. This is a four percent increase from 47.3 percent as of July.

Bob Hutchison, board president, opened the meeting for public comment, however just one man spoke in protest of the increase.

“I just moved back here from Ohio, and there we were able to vote on any tax levy from the school board,” said Timothy Preston of Williamsport. “If the public felt the district was doing a good job, the levy was approved. However, I feel taxed to death down here and I’m giving thought to moving back.”

Hutchison thanked Preston for his remark and invited anyone else to speak. After a minute of silence, he declared that the public meeting portion of the meeting was concluded and moved on to the regular meeting.

After approving the previous board minutes and a quick renovation report on the progress at Flat Gap Elementary, the board voted to approve the tax increase to $.49 on every $100 of property tax and 52.2 percent on every $100 of motor vehicle tax.

An example was given by Tom Salyer, Johnson County School Board Superintendent, “A home valued at $100,000 would pay $17 per year for school tax."

The next item on the agenda was to introduce and discuss the purchase and distribution of 1,600 Google Chromebooks as part of the Kentucky Department of Education Technology Systems.

According to Frank Wells, director of KETS, who was at the board meeting to answer questions, this may be the biggest rollout in state history.

Students will be issued Lenovo N22 model Chromebooks with Johnson County School District specific applications valued at $184 per student and paid through a combination of the KETS grant, school instructional funding, an annual technology fee to be paid by students estimated at $30 per year.

In years following, there would be an annual senior buy-out offered to graduating students to purchase the Chromebook at a discounted rate. Every year, 7th graders and 10th graders starting middle and high school would be issued new equipment, and the old equipment would be collected, refurbished and sent to equip elementary school students.

The initial cost to implement this initiative is $251,905.20 with teachers themselves contributing $19,688 out of classroom funding to purchase protective cases for the equipment at $13 per student for a total cost of $22,342.03.

Over the past few years, as part of the 21st Century Classroom program that started around 7 or 8 years ago, $2 million dollars has been used to put 50 inch plasma screens, digital camera and electronic support in every classrooms, and $3 million has been used to install network infrastructure to support this technological growth. This costs includes maintenance agreements, infrastructure upgrade costs, and software applications including security and establishment of a Google domain for Johnson County Education.

Wells mentioned to the board that Google has a $100,000 bounty on anyone who could find flaws in their security system –though one has not been discovered yet. Wells mentioned that his daughter was attending Eastern Kentucky University and that all of her classwork was online, as was her textbooks, discussion groups and assignments.

“This is the way of the future,” he said.

Salyers mentioned that all the major testing vendors were moving to similar applications on Chromebook. The members of the school board quickly approved the purchase of the Chromebooks with no discussions.

The Chromebooks are anticipated to be purchased this week and deployed to employees during the week of Oct. 10 and distributed to students during the week of Oct. 24.

The board moved quickly through other business, including the purchase of three new buses, including one additional propane bus to add to the fleet.

Hutchison asked how the propane-powered bus purchased at the beginning of the school year was working out and Ron Fairchild, director of transportation said, “It’s working like a dream.”

The Johnson County Board of Education meets every third Monday of the month at the school board offices. Monthly meetings are open to the public for attendance.