The Lincoln County School Board congratulated district ReadingFair winners and changed the central office hours during aregularly scheduled meeting Monday night.

Superintendent Perry Miller and board members opened the meetingby congratulating four West Lincoln, two Bogue Chitto and oneEnterprise School students who advanced to at least district-levelcompetition. Students receiving accolades included: from WestLincoln, Rebecca Case, Brannon Hughes, Landry Barrilleaux and NikkiRoyal; from Bogue Chitto, Laken Crosby and Cassie Moak; and fromEnterprise, Jared Smith.

The board also approved a recommendation from Miller to changethe hours at the central office from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to 7:30 a.m.to 4:30 p.m.

“We’re probably the only school district in southwestMississippi still open at 5 p.m.,” Miller said.

The central office is usually fairly dull in the half hourbetween 4:30 p.m. and 5 p.m., Miller added, because the buses andstudents are home and other superintendents’ offices areclosed.

In other matters, the school board briefly discussed preliminaryaudit results for fiscal year 2001.

“I promise you it will be nothing like last year’s report,”Miller said. “We’ve come a long way.”

Last year, auditors discovered some major problems in theschool’s accounting practices and the district moved in themeantime to correct them.

“There are some weaknesses, but in many of those we’ve alreadymade the changes,” Miller said. “The report reflects what thedistrict looked like ten months ago.”

The board went into executive session for about 45 minutes todiscuss a letter of termination on a district employee. The boardtook no action in the executive session, but the termination letterwas among letters of resignation and retirement approved by theboard.

Letha Presley, federal programs coordinator, briefed the boardon federal programs applications and, later, reported on thesuccess of the Special Education World Wind tour by federalinspectors.

“They found the (program) was well-written and the teachers wereenthusiastic,” Presley said. “It was a good report.”

Miller also received official approval from the board to acceptthe donation from the Enterprise PTA and boosters of an airconditioning system and the electrical service to install it in theEnterprise School gym. The system costs $11,600 and the electricalservice was around $1,845.

The system has already been installed and doing a fine job,according to board members.

“It was doing a great job,” said Jerry Coon. “I think it’s goingto be real nice. Spring and fall have always been real hot and Ithink this will be very nice. We certainly appreciate their doingthis.”