Mobile County school board previewed $1.1 million health contract, dozens of textbook and service purchases ahead of Monday vote

Mobile County Public Schools officials on Friday presented a package of fiscal and operational items for the board’s consideration Monday, including a proposed fiscal-year 2025 budget amendment, the district’s 2025–26 calendar and numerous textbook, software and service contracts.

The presentation included a $1,099,614.69 contract with USA Health Children’s and Women’s Hospital to provide supervision for four full-time teachers and one administrator; district staff said that agreement would be paid from state funds. Staff also flagged a $92,925 federal grant-funded contract with Kids First Education for professional development in English language arts, math and special education, and a separate $133,200 school-improvement contract with Savage Learning to provide 36 professional-development sessions at a middle school.

The staff presenter told the board the textbook-adoption items are coming from the Alabama State Department of Education textbook allocation funds. “We don’t have to kick in like we’ve done in the past,” the presenter said, adding that state-recommended selections do not necessarily require the district to purchase every title. “The law only says that we have to select a textbook. That don’t necessarily mean we have to purchase them.”

Other listed contracts and amounts in the staff packet included: a $115,688.80 school-improvement purchase of 3,500 on-demand tutoring hours from Brainfuse; Follett Software pricing and on-site barcoding services for newly adopted science textbooks at $98,763 from the local textbook operations budget; a $64,800 Title II-funded contract with Encore to produce an HR dashboard consolidating data from multiple systems; a $52,920 federal-funds speech-therapy contract with Katrina Bouette; and a $41,000 professional-development contract reported as funded from Title I and Title II sources.

Facilities work on the agenda included culinary hood upgrades, roofing and stadium miscellaneous repairs with a contractor identified as Stoloski. When asked for a cost estimate, a district staff member said the stadium repairs are “around $6,000,000,” and described the project as phased. Board members asked for a written plan showing what will be completed in phases 1, 2 and 3; the staff member said they will provide those phase plans.

A change order for Theodore High School was listed as a decrease of $11,548, bringing that project’s total to $287,106.92. The presenter said the change order will be paid from PSF funds.

Several flow-through items for private schools and multiple consent items were also included in the packet, with funding sources specified for many as Title I, II, III or IV, state funds or local school funds. Staff said student expulsions and personnel items would be provided under separate cover.

A board member asked that two consent items (identified in the packet as Nos. 3 and 8) be pulled for further consideration at Monday’s meeting. Also, the district’s attorney said there are three employee agreements that will require action Monday; those were described as the subject of prior emails to the board and will be added to the Monday agenda.

The board did not take final votes on the presented items Friday; officials said they will ask the board to approve the items at the regular Monday meeting. The meeting concluded with a standard motion to adjourn that passed by voice vote.