Oconee County Schools begins the school year on Aug. 2 with 126 new hires, including 93 new certified employees, 78 of whom are teachers, Justin Cofer, Chief Human Resources Officer, told the Oconee County Board of Education on Monday.
More than half of those new teachers have six or more years of teaching experience, he said, and 64 percent of the certified new hires have advanced degrees.
In a wide ranging talk to the Oconee County Democrats last month, Greg Bluestein, political reporter at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, reflected on his career, lamented the decline of newspapers, commented on the 2020 election, and presented an analysis of Georgia politics since that time.
He also speculated on future political developments, saying he doesn’t think Republican Gov. Brian Kemp will run for president this year but also that he doesn’t think Kemp has fully ruled it out.
The Oconee County Library in Watkinsville featured prominently in the beginning and ending of the Board of Commissioners meeting on Tuesday.
Three citizens addressed the commissioners in the citizen comment section as the meeting got underway, raising concerns about the library and its programming, all referencing the packed-hall meeting of the Library Board of Trustees the day before.
The Georgia Department of Public Health reported that the Northeast Health District added 71 new cases of COVID-19 in the week ending on July 12, based on the Department’s electronic tracking system.
The number of cases added a week earlier in the Northeast Health District had been 32. That week had included the holiday. The number of added cases had been 74 the week before that.
The Oconee County Board of Education on Wednesday afternoon announced the dates for three public hearings on a proposed 9.53 percent increase in school property taxes for the current year.
The announcement includes a surprise proposed drop in the millage rate for the schools from the current 15.5 mills to 15.0 mills.
The meeting room at the Oconee County Library in Watkinsville was standing room only at 4:10 p.m. on Monday, though the meeting of the Oconee County Library Board of Trustees wasn’t scheduled to start for another 20 minutes.
By the time Library Board Chair Mark Campbell called the meeting to order, the room was filled way beyond capacity.
Eric Eberhardt, representing QuikTrip, was emphatic in telling the Oconee County Planning Commission last month that the gas station and convenience store his company wants to build opposite the intersection of North Main Street and U.S 441 Bypass north of Watkinsville has truck bays but is not a truck stop.
Ben Qualls, real estate manager for QuikTrip, told the Commission that QuikTrip knows what a truck stop is since it operates them elsewhere, and what is being proposed at that site is not a truck stop.
