Oconee County Schools took in $7.8 million more in revenue than projected in Fiscal Year 2024, according to the Year-To-Date Budget Report for June 30 released to the Board of Education at its meeting on Monday.
The biggest gain in revenue over budgeted amount was for investment income, which totaled $2.7 million. The Board had budgeted investment income of only $50,000.
Katie Green, seeking to fill open Post 5 on the Oconee County Board of Education, asked those present at the Democratic Party meeting last month if they had ever attended a Board meeting.
“They're really weird,” Green said. “The people who sign up to speak for three minutes, they get their three minutes to speak, and then there's just silence.”
Well more than 100 people filled the seats and the isles of the Board room at the Oconee County Schools new Instructional Support Center on Monday night to make sure the Board got the message that they wanted action following the Sept. 4 mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County.
Twenty of those present spoke, with most calling explicitly for the placement of school resource officers in each of Oconee County’s 12 schools.
Questioners of the three Republican Party candidates for the Oconee County School Board raised concerns at the party’s meeting last month about Board responsiveness to citizen input, transparency, and conflicts of interest.
Michael Ransom, currently Post 5 Member of the Board who is seeking to be elected Post 1 Board Chair, said he believes the Board and school administrators do respond to citizens and the Board is transparent in its actions.
Suzannah Heimel, who is running for Post 1 on the Board of Commissioners in November, has filed suit in Oconee County Superior Court asking the Court to force the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration to stop registering voters.
Heimel said she wants to block registration of voters until the Oconee County Board of Elections and Registration holds hearings on 228 voters whose registration was challenged in July.
The Oconee County Board of Education next week will be asked to approve discussions with the Oconee County Sheriff’s Office designed to put a resource officer in each of the 12 Oconee County Schools.
A resource officer has been in each of those schools since the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Barrow County last Wednesday, according to Sheriff James Hale.
The Oconee County Board of Education’s decision in June to hold hearings on its proposed 2.27 percent property tax increase without giving proper public notification has come back to haunt it.
Georgia Code is unambiguous in specifying that governing authorities can hold hearings on any planned tax increase no sooner than seven days after those hearings are advertised in the local legal organ so that citizens have a chance to offer comment.
