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One member of the Grainger County Board of Education wants Director of Schools Mark Briscoe to look into providing free school lunches for all students.

During Tuesday’s BOE meeting at the Central Office, board member Karen McNish requested that free school lunches be made available to all students, akin to the COVID-19 school years when all students received free breakfast and lunches in Grainger County cafeterias.

“Since we have the (American Rescue Plan Act) money, is that something that can be used for?” McNish asked. “We do so much with the backpacks (of food that are provided for hunger insecure children from local organizations), kids take food home with them. Is this something that can be looked into?”

Briscoe said that he and County Schools Nutrition Director Tammy Edde had looked at this during the fall and it would cost more than $1 million annually.

During the recent Grainger County Commission meeting, Sheriff James Harville said that food costs had gone up due to having to serve special diets to certain inmates.

“We have the ability to buy food at lower rates than the Sheriff’s Office,” Briscoe said. “He does have certain exemptions about products he can serve because of religions. For example, they can’t serve anything with pork in it at the jail whatsoever.”

During his time as principal at Grainger High School eight years ago, Briscoe recalled working with inmates from the jail at the school’s soccer field.

“We had wonderful turkey bologna sandwiches,” Briscoe said.

Briscoe went on to say that there’s not a cafeteria manager in the system who lets a child go without food. He said that the cafeteria managers are great about seeing that kids that never comes through the line and taking care of as many kids as they can.

“We can look into it, but you’re going to have to have exact numbers on how many are free and how many are reduced,” he said.

Board member Shelia Bailey asked about a grant similar to what neighboring Union County receives for meals.

“Their ability to pay is lower than ours,” Briscoe said. “Union County is historically one of the highest funded school districts in the state.”

In other action by the BOE, a new roof at Grainger High School will be installed using ESSER funds.

“We have about $350,000 left in ESSER 2.0,” Briscoe said. “We have about $5.6 million in ESSER 3.0. About $3.5 million will go towards the roof at Grainger. A good portion of the ESSER money will allow us to put a roof on. We’re in the process of getting ready to bid that out.”

The board voted 8-0 to reapply for a three-year grant with Douglas-Cherokee for after school programs at Joppa, Rutledge and Joppa elementary schools. Briscoe said that it was time to reapply for this grant, which is administered at no cost to the school system.

The Tennessee Valley Authority also will have a pilot program at Rutledge Elementary for an “Energy Champion” curriculum next year thanks to board approval.

“We have a teacher willing to go through this program,” Briscoe said. “Certain energy lessons will be presented and (lessons) about saving energy and money. I’m assuming that if it’s a hit, they will want us to take it to other schools.”

A mowing contract was approved with Hurst Lawn Service for mowing at all county schools except for Washburn.

A maintenance supervisor pay scale was approved 8-1 with board member Larry Turley voting no while participating remotely.

Twenty-four bus contracts, three less that the total 27 bus routes, were approved for renewal by the board.

The dress code and cell phone policies were approved for the 2023-24 school year.