The Williamson County School Board voted 9-2 on Monday, June 16 to extend Superintendent Jason Golden’s contract, capping off a contentious discussion about whether the vote should happen at all.
Melissa Wyatt was absent for the Work Session. All board members were present for the voting meeting.
Work Session Live Stream - 3:38:45
Voting Meeting Live Stream - 2:11:26
The Superintendent’s Contract Extension
Mr. Golden was hired as the superintendent in 2019 on a 4-year contract. Every June since then, he has requested an extension of one year to keep the contract at 4 years. That is until last June, when he did not request an extension.
This month he did request an extension, and the board voted 9-2 with one abstention to grant him that request. And it was an interesting discussion that led to that vote.
First, Margie Johnson made a motion to delay the vote until September. Her reasoning was that there will be many new board members after August and they should make the decision. (Six board seats will be elected in August. And five incumbents are not seeking reelection.) There was a pause when the chair asked if there was a second. Then Donna Clements verbally seconded the motion while Tony Bostic pressed the button on his iPad to register his second.
Seven of the other nine board members took to their microphones in turn to state why this delay was a bad idea. After the discussion, the motion to delay failed 9-2 with Margie Johnson and Tony Bostic voting to delay and Donna Clements abstaining.
Shortly after, the contract extension passed 9-2, with Margie Johnson and Tony Bostic voting no and Donna Clements abstaining.
Budget
Back in March, the school board approved the 26-27 school year budget. It was sent to the county commission for approval there and is still awaiting finalization. Once the county commission comes to their final determination of what the budget should be, the school board will reconvene for a special meeting at 5pm on June 29, 2026. This just barely beats the June 30 deadline of when it needs to be submitted to the state.
Other topics
Jay Galbreath talked about a change to the cell phone policy at the Work Session. His change did not make it onto the agenda and he said that he intended to make a motion at the voting meeting to add it to the agenda. After some conversations with front office personnel, he decided not to pursue this at the voting meeting.
Two high school football coaches and one WCS parent spoke during public comment to advocate for adding an athletic period to the school day.
There were other comments that continued to express concern about the T2 consolidation. You can read more about that in last month’s writeup
There were also a few folks who were concerned about recent bullying incidents and particularly the use of cell phones to instigate.
Next meeting
As I mentioned, the board will reconvene for an ad hoc meeting at 5pm on June 29. The board does not meet in July, so the next regular meeting will be on Monday, August 17 at 6:30pm. Have a great summer!
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