During Thursday night’s county school board meeting, board members discussed and voted on their final selection for the school system’s new insurance broker.

After the committees met again following the workshop two weeks prior, Director of Schools Kevin Ward said the committee recommended Five Points.

“I thank the county commission for thinking outside the box,” Danny Ward said. “I do not think a lot of people understand what a broker is.”

Danny Ward expressed disapproval at the Five Points recommendation, saying the school district needed to look at changing what they have if they are to succeed.

“If we keep doing the same thing over and over, we will get the same result,” he said.

Kevin Ward said the crux of the conversation rested on comparing apples to apples as opposed to apples and oranges.

“The apple is the county commission,” he said. “When we get into the school system, it is a whole different orange. It is not an apple.”

The difference, he said, was the county has privatized insurance, whereas the school system is part of a hundred-member group, and neither presentation during the workshop recommended the board leave that group just yet.

Tony Garland said change for the sake of change might not be the best idea.

“What we have had has been good,” Garland said. “I am not comfortable changing something that has been good for our employees.”

The board members agreed this is not a permanent vote as it is. They can always choose to change brokers later.

The board ultimately voted in favor of selecting Five Points as their broker. Danny Ward was the only dissenting vote.

Kevin Ward said he has been in talks with nearby school districts about possibly forming a “collaborative curriculum.”

“What we are looking at is a system of sharing curriculum and information as it relates to areas we define as Carter County’s weaknesses.”

Such a collaboration, which Ward said would feature 19 school districts in the region, would allow Carter County to share resources with other districts as needed, and vice versa, to hopefully improve education standards across the region as a whole.

Ward said this would be a budget-related item that will be up for discussion during February’s meeting.

The board formally approved a motion to shift May 19’s in-service day to March 2, otherwise known as Super Tuesday, so school employees can participate in the voting process.