Members of the Hamilton County School Board on Monday discussed adding a $3,000 travel allowance annually per board member.
The board will vote on the issue at its next board meeting Jan. 18. The total for all 11 board members would be $33,000.
“I think $3,000 each is a bit much,” said school board member Faye Robinson.
It was discussed that board members spent $31,000 on board travel last year.
“I do think it’s important for us to put in the work to better ourselves,” said board member Ben Connor, who had suggested more than $6,000 per board member, or $68,300 total.
He reasoned that the Hamilton County Commissioners’ travel budget is about $15,000 each. Because the school district spends about half of the county’s total budget, he said, the board’s travel budget should be about half of the commission’s.
“I certainly don’t think we need to be paying a teacher’s salary to the school board for our travel,” said board member Rhonda Thurman.
Mr. Connor counted 21 leadership events and classes promoted by the Tennessee School Board Association, including the TSBA annual convention and the National School Boards Association conference.
The board discussed that these two events cost $325 and $300, respectively. They said these items would cover a board member’s required seven and a half hours of annual training, what Mr. Connor called the “bare minimum.”
New board members are required to tally an additional seven hours their first year.
Mr. Connor said that as chair of the Legislative Committee he travels frequently to Nashville and occasionally to Washington, D.C., and to the Consortium of State School Boards Association national conference.
“I know Mr. Connor would like to see more, but I think $3,000 is a fair number,” said board member Gary Kuehn. “He’s got the desire to go to these meetings,” he said. “I think if we’ve got an individual that wants to do that, hey, more power to him.”
“We pay a good amount of money to a lobbyist, do we not,” Ms. Thurman said, adding that school board attorney Scott Bennett handles the district’s legal issues well.
Mr. Kuehn said he likes hearing Mr. Connor’s legislation report in “layman’s terms.”
Unused funds revert to the general budget, it was stated, or board members can give their unused funds to board members who travel more.