School Board Chairman Answers Critics over Decision to Drop Billboard

Members of the Board of Education recently came under criticism for a decision to cut $4,100 in funding from the budget by dropping the rental of a billboard sign on Highway 70 near the high school showing a picture of several DCHS graduates with the theme “Education Counts in DeKalb County”.
Board Chairman W.J. (Dub) Evins, III, speaking at Thursday night’s meeting, said while the board is dropping the billboard, students will be promoted by other means.
“When we passed the budget we took out $4,100 because of the cost of the billboard. I want the public to know that we did cut that money from this category but we are looking at a number of other options for promoting students. We’ve sold three (out of service) buses for $20,000 so we’re planning to take some money from transportation. We want to show our appreciation to students for their accomplishments but we want to be in a position to spread that out among all the schools and not just for a few students at the high school,” said Chairman Evins.
According to Evins, the billboard may not have been the most productive means of promoting students. ” It is hard to identify (students pictured on the billboard). Anyone in marketing can tell you if you get too much on a billboard you are not going to be able to see anything. We just felt it (billboard) was non productive. We still want to promote those students and we intend to do that very soon,” he said.
Changeable signs on school buses may be one option for promoting students. “A lot of school systems are putting advertisements on their buses. We don’t want to advertise. We want to promote. By our next workshop or meeting, I’ll bring some photos of those. They are not distracting. We can go to a local sign company (to have them made). If you have your student council you want to promote (for example) they can be placed on the side of a bus. There would be a lot of traffic (visibility) with it. Or you could have a first grade student who may be the principal of the day or something like that and have a sign put on there (promoting it). There are a lot of different ways to promote (our students). So we’re not cutting it out. We’re expanding it. We hope the public understands we’re trying to promote more and not just on one billboard,” said Chairman Evins.