BY KARISSA MILLER
The Iredell-Statesville Schools Board of Education voted earlier this month to reduce the number of meetings it holds during the 2025-2026 academic year.
The board will have 16 meetings, which is five fewer than were scheduled for the current year. The board will operate on a reduced number of Committee of the Whole (COW) meetings schedule.
The dates and meeting type are as follows:
• July 14, 2025, Regular meeting
• Aug. 4, 2025, COW meeting
• Aug. 11, 2025, Regular meeting
• Sept. 15, 2025, Regular Meeting
• Oct. 13, 2025, Regular Meeting
• Nov. 3, 2025, COW Meeting
• Nov. 10, 2025, Regular Meeting
• Dec. 8, 2025, Regular Meeting
• Jan. 12, 2026, Regular meeting
• Feb. 2, 2026, COW Meeting
• Feb. 9, 2026, Regular Meeting
• March 16, 2026, Regular Meeting
• April 13, 2026, Regular Meeting
• May 4, 2026, COW Meeting
• May 11, 2026, Regular Meeting
• June 8, 2026, Regular Meeting
The decision was made after Chairman Doug Knight and Superintendent Jeff James evaluated best practices and aimed to streamline the meeting process.
“From our perspective, some of the COW (Committee of the Whole) meetings, I don’t know how productive they were. We can fold some of the COW into the regular board meeting,” Knight explained.
His goal is to “run meetings a little more efficiently.”
COW meetings, Knight continued, became necessary because regular board meetings were taking too much time.
“COW meetings allowed the board to get some discussion in ahead of the regular meeting so that a meeting would not have to go on all night long,” he added.
James explained that the board can call a special meeting when issues arise or as needed.
“It is less formal and since it is a called meeting there won’t be any discussion from the general public,” James said. “It’s time to allow the board to ask some questions and go a little more into detail.”
He said that the district will start holding a mid-year review meeting for the board as requested. This will allow the board to review the data and talk about the district’s strategic plan.
“Our hopes are to provide the board much more opportunity to work with some of our schools that are at-risk and ask deeper questions and get a little more involved,” James said.
OTHER BUSINESS
In other business, the board:
♦ Selected Southern Flooring to install a new gym floor at Statesville High School. The company’s $210,000 bid was the lowest among three companies. The work will be done in summer 2025 and will take an estimated six to eight weeks to complete. The funds will come out of the district’s 2024-2025 capital budget.