By LYNETTE SOWELL-STEVENS
Cove Leader-Press
During Monday night’s special called meeting of the Copperas Cove ISD board of trustees, the board approved a resolution will spend $5.4 million in revenue that was not part of the current fiscal year budget.
The district has received $2.7 million from a property value study appeal, and $2.7 million in Impact Aid funding.
The board approved the request to fund an additional $500 per employee set to receive a 3% raise and give teachers an additional $500, which would mean a total retention stipend of $1,000 for teachers. The disbursements will be paid in August and September. This will help offet the increase in staff insurance premiums, according to the agenda documents.
“It’s unfortunate that those insurance rates continue to skyrocket, but I just add that that’s around a little under a million dollars in what would come out of that $5.4 or $5.5 million that I just talked about, and that brings a total of employee pay increases to a tick under $2 million for the 26-27 year,” said CCISD Superintendent Brent Hawkins.
Another approved expenditure with the funds is purchasing phase 3 of LED lighting to retrofit the campus lighting to LED on all non-bond campuses. Installing the lighting on the campuses will give additional savings to the district, now and in the long run.
“We can also project about a $200,000 savings a year moving forward out of the million-dollar hit that we took on increase of electrical cost, and so we want to spend money to save money,” Hawkins told the board. “Over the course of 10-20 years, we feel like that it’ll be a good financial advantage for our school district.”
The 3rd proposed expenditure would be to fund one-time capital and deferred maintenance projects to help relieve the upcoming 2026-2027 budget.
The board’s regular meeting for the month of June will be held on Monday, June 22, at 6 p.m.
Both meetings will be recorded and available for replay on the district’s YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/@CopperasCoveISDTX.
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