Carter takes over as President of city BOE

Oct. 20—The Cullman City School Board elected new officers during Tuesday's meeting, with Amy Carter taking over as president and Jason Neal being selected to serve as vice-president.

Carter took the reins of the board after spending the last year as vice-president under former president Chris Branham.

Cullman City Schools Superintendent Kyle Kallhoff congratulated Carter and Neal for their new positions and thanked Branham for his service as president over the past year on behalf of the system's employees — particularly during the transition to a new superintendent.

"On any board that goes through a leadership transition, that's difficult for a president to lead," Kallhoff said. "It's a tall order, and he did it with grace."

Kallhoff also gave an update on some of the projects that are ongoing or in the works for the system.

He said he and other system leaders met with the two architect firms that are planning the expansion projects at Cullman City Primary School and Cullman Middle School to make sure everyone is on the same page about the bidding process and to make sure the schools would not be competing against each other for bids.

The system will advertise the bids for both projects in November, with bidding beginning in December and bids being selected in January, Kallhoff said.

The high school gym's new bleachers are still on track to be installed before the beginning of the season, and the installation of turf on the high school softball field should also be complete before first pitch, he said.

The board approved a bid of $413,519 from Coston General Contractors for the softball field turf project during Tuesday's meeting. The board also accepted an alternate bid from Coston General Contractors for $18,100 for retention nets for the field.

Members of Terrell Technical Services also met with the faculty and staff of West Elementary School about the school's air quality testing, which found last month that the school had little to no mold active and actually found that the school had less mold in the interior of the building than was found in outside tests, Kallhoff said.

Two classrooms have been closed since the beginning of the school year because mold was detected in the air, and Servpro also spoke to staff members about their cleaning process that is still ongoing, as well as HVAC engineers, who discussed some of their potential plans to upgrade the school's heating and air system to ensure that more mold issues do not crop up in the future, he said.

"I feel like it was a very productive meeting," he said.

The board also approved two out-of-state field trip requests, with the Cullman Middle School FFA traveling to the FFA National Convention in Indianapolis, Indiana on Oct. 26-29 and the Cullman High School junior varsity and varsity cheerleaders attending the UCA High School National competition in Orlando, Florida on Feb. 10-15.

In other business, the board:

* Approved Jason Neal as delegate and Joey Orr as alternate delegate for the Alabama Association of School Board 2021 Annual Convention and Delegate Assembly in Birmingham on Dec. 2-4.

* Passed a resolution designating October 2021 as Dyslexia Awareness Month.

* Awarded fuel bid to B&B Petroleum with a bid of $3.05 for 87 octane non-ethanol gasoline and $2.95 for diesel.

* Approved the full-time itinerant instructional substitute job description.

* Approved Grant Solutions Notice of Grant Award FY20 COLA supplement for Cullman City Head Start.

* Approved a mentor teacher agreement for Carin Rains for the 2021-2022 school year.

* Approved stipends for teachers attending OGAP math training July 29-30.

* Approved a contract with Mary "Cindy" Stidham to provide custodial duties for the Central Office for Oct. 20 through Sept. 30, 2022.

* Approved a contract with Amanda Stidham to provide tutoring-reading at Cullman City Primary School beginning Nov. 1 through April 29, 2022.

* Approved a contract with Dori Potter to provide Extended Day nursing beginning Aug. 11 to May 26, 2022, not to exceed 15 hours per week (West Elementary School Extended Day funds).

* Approved the revised Cullman City Primary School Extended Day Program Salary Schedule.

* Approved Head Start Fiscal Report for September 2021 and Health/Nutrition/Disabilities/Enrollment Report for September 2021.

* Approved the salvage of a Dell 1510X projector with speakers from Cullman City Primary School.

* The Cullman City School Board will next meet on Nov. 16 at 5 p.m. in the Central Office Board Room.