LIBERTY — Amite County school board members handled a long agenda of items in the final meeting before the new school year begins, but one school trustee became so frustrated, he left less than 10 minutes into the meeting.
Shortly after the meeting began, trustee Albert White Sr. walked out in disgust because the agenda didn’t include technology purchases.
White said he brought up the matter at the board’s May meeting, “and we still do not have it — something we really need, and school’s about to start.”
Board president Jimmy Burns said nobody has presented the board with the agenda item, a matter that White contested. White asked to be on the agenda in May and spoke of concerns he had about technological needs for the district’s teachers.
However, Superintendent Scotty Whittington said White overstepped his bounds by meeting with teachers personally and by visiting the schools on his own. After about 20 minutes of speaking in May, board attorney Nate Armistad stopped White’s comments, Whittington said.
“We’ve been working on our technology needs together,” Whittington said of the administrators and technology director Reggie Matthews. “He was at the budget meeting and we told him what we have the money to pay for. We’ve already been getting equipment in.”
Whittington said Matthews will talk to the board at its August meeting and discuss current technology equipment and future needs.
In another contentious matter, a 16th Section hunting land lessee who asked permission to have water and electricity on the property got more than he bargained for.
Mark Dyess of Louisiana, who leases some 590 school-owned acres and said he paid $2,000 above the next-highest bidder, wants to run utilities for a trailer on the property.
However, board president Jimmy Burns told Dyess that “if you put a roof on it (referring to any type of camp), the lease can be renegotiated to get more money for the land.”
Burns said state 16th Section laws demand that districts get as much income as they can for the land they lease.
“You sent the red flag up by asking,” Burns told Dyess. “I have to go after every nickel I can get for this school district.”
Dyess said he asked someone in the district office about the camp before he bid on the lease and was told it would not be a problem.
“I’m not going to pay more for the lease when I already paid $2,000 over the next guy,” Dyess said, adding that he’d give up the lease if it cost him more.
Burns repeated that if the Mississippi Forestry Commission sees a camp on 16th Section land, the board has the right to renegotiate for more lease money.
