OK a mistake was made. Maybe it can be corrected. How you say? I read that a couple of colleges want a campus in Fayette County. Maybe we can sell this unneeded school that we were "forced" to build to one of them?

by the BOE
Positive spin on school news costs Fayette taxpayers $183,000
Tue, 11/14/2006 - 4:35pmBy: John Thompson
Getting out the good news and achievements of students comes with a price tag in Fayette and Coweta counties.

In Fayette County, the public relations effort of the school system uses a number of different tactics and costs more than $183,000 on a yearly basis, according to information obtained by The Citizen.

The biggest chunk of money comes in the form of salaries and benefits to Public Information Officer Melinda Berry-Dreisbach and a secretary in her office. Berry-Dreisbach pulls down $63,348 a year, while her secretary makes $47,349.

For her salary, Berry-Dreisbach is the face of the school system in dealing with media requests and also sending out press releases to the local media touting the achievements of teachers and students in the school system.

She writes all the scripts for the education shows on Comcast Cable Channel 24 and also appears on camera for many of the programs, designs all slides that are shown on the channel and schedules the slides and videos for airing.

The system also contracts with a vendor to shoot programs for Channel 24 on Comcast. Berry-Dreisbach said the vendor is paid $22 an hour and worked more than 511 hours during the 2005-2006 school year for a total of $11,247. She did note that there is a $15,000 annual cap on the contract.

The budget also includes $31,000 for the printed flyers and brochures the school system publishes. Berry-Dreisbach said these include a three times a year newsletter, financial brochures and school calendars for all the students and employees.

Although not in the public relations budget, the school spokesperson also assists in getting items on the system’s Web site. Berry-Dreisbach said the cost to maintain and update the site is $50,827 per year, which includes server costs, software and salary for the webmaster.

In adjacent Coweta County, the system spends just over $135,000 for its public information department. Public Information Officer Dean Jackson makes $69,442, but does not have a secretary on his staff. The department pays $25,200 a year to Newnan Utilities for programming on its cable channel, and another $10,740 a year to Paper Moon Production for programming on Charter Communication.

Jackson explained the system contracted with Newnan Utilities several years ago for the service and now has a 24-hour station that repeats programming in six-hour blocks.

“It really helps us get out the message of what’s going on in the system,” he said

He said the school system’s Web site is handled by people in the technology department and did not have a breakdown of the actual costs of maintaining the Web site.

Both public information representatives are on call 24 hours in the case of a breaking school emergency.