SPRINGFIELD — Exchange Club of Effingham County members don’t have to go to school anymore. School comes to them.

That was the case during their May 1 meeting at Renasant Bank when Assistant Superintendent Dr. Yancy Ford of the Effingham County School District served as the guest speaker. He updated the club on school district happenings.

“The one thing that we have always tried to hang our hat on is to maintain that hometown feel even though we are a large district,” Ford said early in his remarks.

Effingham County has nearly 13,000 students, a number that is expected to grow by 250-300 annually for the foreseeable future.

“We want to run our business, our school district, so that it is very approachable by the community,” Ford said. “If a parent wants to come in and meet with us and we are available, we don’t want to require them to have an appointment. We want that personal touch because we feel like that is what Effingham County has been successful doing and we want to maintain that.

“Along with that growth, though, comes problems, and some people like to bring problems that they have from the outside in.”

Ford touted the importance of ESPLOST, a one percent sales tax that funds education projects. The current five-year ESPLOST expires in 2022.

“We were able to build (Rincon Elementary School on Fort Howard Road) by using ESPLOST,” Ford said. “We did a bond where we pay the principal and interest every year using ESPLOST. It usually takes from around September to the end of December with our ESPLOST funds to take care of that.

“By us being able to do that, everybody that comes into our county is spending money to help build and maintain really nice schools and we are able to keep the millage rate at a lower rate than what other districts are having to do.”

Rincon Elementary School, which will soon be paid for in full, cost $20,686,774. It has a capacity of 1,200 students, about 300 more than its current enrollment.

 Ford noted that the Effingham County Board of Education recently redrew school zones in order to ease crowding at some facilities. This created concern among some parents.

“My message (to parents) is that all (the schools) are very good,” Ford said. “I don’t have a problem putting my kid in any school in the district. I will tell you that they are all different and each one has its own little culture, and that’s what we want.

“At the end of the day, we are very satisfied with the growth that they continue to make at all the schools.”

Ford then veered back into ESPLOST, saying it helped pay for the installation of air conditioning on most of the district’s 121 buses.

“The way we determined who got air conditioning was the length of the route,” he explained.

The district has 366 daily routes, with 7,600 students transported in the morning and 8,300 in the afternoon.

Ford said the district has enhanced bus safety by partnering with Bus Patrol, a company focused on reducing stop-arm violations through the use of cameras.

Videos of potential infractions are sent wirelessly to Bus Patrol and the Effingham County Sheriff’s Office for verification. Violators are then sent $250 citations in the mail.

“In one month when we did our study, we had almost 300 bus violations of running a (bus) stop sign,” Ford said. “Our message is that we are not trying to make money. The way the contract works is that the ticket goes to Bus Patrol until the equipment is paid for and then the funds come to the school district but we are not interested in that at all.

“Our interest is keeping the kids safe.”

Toward the end of his presentation, Ford talked about the school district’s proposed $121 million budget.

“About 90 percent of that is payroll and benefits,” Ford said.

The district currently has 922 certified employees and 755 non-certified ones.

“The governor approved a $3,000 raise and salary schedule for each certified educator and two percent (raises) on the non-certified,” Ford said. 

Ford said the starting salary for an Effingham County teacher with a bachelor’s degree will be $41,000.

“We’ve got to be competitive,” he said. “It’s hard to get young college kids who might be from Atlanta, Georgia, to move to Effingham County. (Our starting salary) is still a little below Chatham (County) but we are above Liberty (County), Bulloch (County), Screven (County) and Bryan (County).

“We are just trying to be competitive in the market so we can bring good teachers here.”