By Alex Nicoll

Editor-in-Chief

@NicollMac

The special April 13  Board of Trustees meeting generated quite a deal of  buzz  with the decision to hire the high-profile return of former Coppell head coach Joe McBride as the new athletics director.

The session opened with a closed meeting where the board voted on the hiring. They reconvened where trustee David Apple motioned for the approval of the hiring and trustee Judy Barbo seconded. McBride was voted in on a unanimous 7-0 vote.

McBride was one of three final candidates for the position after the job position was posted when Crawford announced his retirement.

“When you see any hiring take place, the district put in place a group to review candidates that submitted applications, they review them for what the fit was in that,” Board of Trustees president Anthony Hill said. “With McBride, they recommended him and that was the recommendation the superintendent brought to us.”

Other items on the agenda included approving an award for Pasco Brokerage, Inc. for renovating and replacing the cafeteria serving line equipment at Denton Creek Elementary, Town Center Elementary and Coppell Middle School East. The Child Nutrition Department also was requesting permission to use part of its fund balance ($315,870) to facilitate the renovations.

Denton Creek and Town Center will receive brand new serving counters while CMSE will receive relocated serving counters from Coppell High School.

To be in accordance with state requirements the Child Nutrition Department also will be utilizing $300,000 of the Child Nutrition fund balance to assist with kitchen equipment upgrades, in order to get the operating fund to be sufficient to cover three months of operational expenses.

The $615,870 deduction from the original $1,251,313 will accomplish this task.

Second on the agenda was the motion to approve the Resolution of Official Intent to Reimburse Costs of the Coppell Independent School District Project. This will free up funds to facilitate the establishment of more infrastructure and wireless capacity in the district.

The last action on the agenda was revising, adding and deleting parts of local policies.

Noticeable were changes to public comment at meetings with only allocating 30 minutes for individuals to speak compared to the original 60 minutes.

Another noticeable change was allowing learners to earn credit for a course if the average of the two semester grades is a 70, even if they failed one of the semesters.

None of these policy changes were new according to assistant superintendent for administration Brad Hunt. The session was just to make changes to the actual verbiage in the written form of the policies to reflect what the district is already practicing.

For more information on the policy changes, visit http://www.coppellisd.com/Page/8423