The Wilkes County Board of Education has decided to find a place for next year's sixth-graders in the new school complex, ending months of concerns that state funding cutbacks would leave them out.

Over the last two years, as the board had developed plans for building the new middle-school and high-school complex, cutbacks in the state of Georgia's funding forced Superintendent Joyce Williams to work with less and less money. One of the results in the funding cuts was a reduction in the number of classrooms in the new complex.

One option was to house the five or six sixth-grade classes in the Washington-Wilkes Elementary School. After much study and consultation with school leaders, however, Williams said that with some reconfiguration and shifting, administrators can fit sixth, seventh, and eighth grades in the new middle-school complex and still keep them physically separated from high school students. She made that recommendation to the board, and they voted in favor of the choice.

The board again considered joining the Consortium for Adequate School Funding, as the organization's executive director, Joe Martin, and Jeff Welch, superintendent of Oglethorpe County schools, spoke on behalf of the ongoing law suit.

Welch and Martin summed up the history of state funding cutbacks, saying that state funding formulas had not increased since the 1980s, with the exception of salaries, and that years of begging and pleading with lawmakers had not improved the situation. The burden of school funding is now falling more and more on local property taxpayers, which hurt rural school systems disproportionately.

Legislators had counseled Martin that the only real option was to sue the state, and now nearly a third of the school systems in Georgia have joined the suit. The Consortium charges that the state constitution says, "the provision of adequate education shall be the obligation of the state," but the state is not living up to that obligation. They are asking the state to raise the starting point for funding to an adequate level.

The lawsuit will go to trial in October in the Superior Court of Fulton County in hopes that a decision will force the state to improve its funding of school systems across the state. Welch and Martin invited Wilkes County to join in the suit. "Others have carried the ball this far," Martin said. "But we need more players on the team. Would you join us?"

Board Chairman Ricky Callaway said that the board is very interested in joining the suit. "We're going to put it to a vote at the next meeting," he said.

In her construction update, Williams told the board of numerous "challenges" with the construction, including the ongoing struggle to get a $250,000 GDOT grant reimbursement for paving already done, and complications with the floor plan for the athletic field house. Despite the problems, however, the new school complex is coming along well. "It's really beginning to shape up," Williams said.

In other action, the board approved a recommendation to put out a request for proposals for a system-wide copier lease for the system rather than extend the present contract.

Elaine Wheatley, in her financial report, said that the FY07 audit had found five bank accounts that the school system did not have records of, including one for the high school's typing club, one for the bus barn, and one for FHA parents. Each account needed to get its own federal tax ID number separate from the school system's.

The audit also found that a few teachers and staff were underpaid or overpaid. The superintendent recommended that the board vote to pay those underpaid, and require payment of any overpayment.

The board adjourned for an executive session for personnel and for an update on legal issues related to school construction and funding.