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By Charlotte Underwood
JACKSBORO, TN (WLAF)- Campbell County Board of Education members continued budget discussions briefly on Tuesday afternoon, approving the 142 Federal Projects School Fund and the 143 Central Cafeteria Fund. These were approved unanimously by the nine school board members present at the meeting. School Board Chairman Jeffrey Miller finished the meeting up with a motion to send both of these budgets, as well as the earlier approved General Purpose 141 School Fund budget onto the county commission to its budget and finance committee, which is expected to meet in early May, before being sent on to the full commission for a vote at its May meeting.
First approved during Tuesday’s less than 10-minute meeting was the 142 Federal Projects Fund. Zach Marlow with the county finance department spoke briefly regarding the fund.
“This fund is based on how much the state allocates. They released some initial allocations yesterday afternoon, they released it based on what we received in the current year, so we know these numbers are not going to hold, so these are estimates and they will change and you will see budget amendments before in probably in July and August and that is standard,” Marlow said.
He told board members that finance had talked to the state and based on what they had been advised that at “this stage of the game” finance felt it best to approve the 142 as they have it estimated, and that “tweaks will be made as necessary.”
This fund was approved unanimously.
Next approved was the Central Cafeteria 143 fund for school nutrition, which was also approved unanimously.
Marlow also said that overall, finance projected a decrease in revenue and expenditure based on a reduction in enrollment.
“Expenditures are less, because you will be spending less on food supplies,” Marlow said.
The 143-Cafeteria Fund does maintain $200,000 appropriation for equipment that is maintained to purchase ovens if needed and has been maintained over the last couple years.
The Cafeteria Fund has its own separate fund balance.
“We are projecting that they will start the year with a fund balance of $5,119,000.00. It is for the school nutrition fund and cannot be used for general operating costs.
Miller spoke briefly, saying that the finance department would like the BOE to make a motion to approve the 141, 142 and the 143 fund to send to the county commission for their approval.
“With that being said, I am going to make the motion to approve all three tonight to send to the county commission. This motion was approved unanimously.
After the conclusion of the meeting, BOE member Brandon Johnson spoke briefly with WLAF, saying that while he did not support many of the cuts in the 141 budget, the “time for those debates and that discussion was the other evening.”
“My vote yes was not because I support the 141 budget, it was simply procedural, there was no reason to continue to drag our feet on something, we need to get this to the county commission so they can approve it. So, I did not support the 141 fund, but I do support us having a budget in place,” Johnson said.
After the meeting concluded, BOE chairman Miller also made a statement to WLAF.
“I’m glad that this is done, it was not an easy thing. I want thank the department of finance for their work and communication, a special thanks to Ms. (Nancy) Lay for her contribution, as well as to Ms. (Charlotte) McCoy and at the end of the day, our goal is to maintain student enrollment. If we maintain student enrollment, we will never be faced with this again. It’s been a hard process; there’s nothing easy about this. The times are changing in public education, so we’ve got to make ourselves attractive, we’ve got to maintain our kids and we need to grow, so we need everything on the table, if we maintain student enrollment, we don’t have big cuts,” Miller said. (WLAF NEWS PUBLISHED-04/29/2026-6AM)