Tipton County board approves student representative pilot, vendor agreements and $1.08 million federal RUS award

The Tipton County Schools Board of Education voted to create a student board representative pilot and approved a series of contracts and grant actions at its regular meeting.

The board approved policy 1101.1021 to pilot a nonvoting student board representative, passed amendments to a professional services agreement with A2H Inc. for procurement of furniture, fixtures and equipment for the new Covington Elementary and Covington Middle School projects, authorized an agreement with the University of Tennessee to provide preschool inclusion services funded from an IDEA preschool grant, and accepted a Rural Utilities Service (RUS) Distance Learning and Telemedicine award of $1,077,232 that requires a 15% local match.

Board members said the student representative will be a pilot arrangement intended to bring student input into discussions; the policy language and the selection process were described as a “toe in the water” pilot the board will evaluate and may expand later. The board discussed options for selecting a representative (principal nomination or a democratic selection at the school level) and suggested the pilot could test one representative from a chair’s district before expanding.

On procurement, the board approved amendments to A2H’s scope for FF&E (furniture, fixtures and equipment) procurement for the two…