Clay Board of Education Approves New CTE Vehicle

The Clay County Board of Education approved a new transportation vehicle for the CTE program during Thursday night’s meeting.

Clay County High School Agriculture and Science Teacher Amanda Craighead said the school’s trailer can only be pulled using personal vehicles. Craighead said the lack of a designated vehicle creates stress for the staff. Craighead also said having one would greatly improve student safety.

“As far as just reliability, I’m getting ready to take four teenage girls to UT Martin here in a couple of months and I would really like a safe vehicle that I don’t have concerns about to make those trips,” Craighead said. “Like that’s a huge reassurance on our CTE department.”

Clay CTE Director Kim Upton said the goal is to secure an eight-passenger vehicle. She said a state grant provided the funds needed to purchase a new Suburban. Upton said surrounding counties have already secured new vehicles for their CTE departments to take a step forward.

“Overton County, they also got two Suburbans, and that’s the process that they’re doing,” Upton said. “Macon County got two Yucons, and Jackson County, most people got two vehicles.”

Craighead said the school year has already included six trips where this vehicle would have made a difference. Craighead said student groups can be as large as fifteen or even eighteen, and when that happens, staff have had to partly rely on personal vehicles.

“We’ve used the school vans as much as possible, lot of times we have between fifteen to eighteen students that are attending conferences or camps with us,” Craighead said. “And when that’s the case, three vehicles is what it takes for us to haul. And so a lot of times what we’ll do is take two of the school vans and our personal vehicle if we need to haul anything extra.”

Upton said she had spoken with other school systems to learn how they manage vehicle maintenance and security. Upton said other CTE directors told her they keep the vehicles under their department’s control and are the only ones authorized to use them. Upton also said after discussion, a regular cleaning and maintenance schedule will be put in place.

In other business, all non-faculty and volunteer coaches have been approved for the 2024-2025 season. Progress reports have been sent home this week.