“We seek to restore credibility and trust in your School Board,” said Beth Hardy, District 4, last Wednesday night, shortly after being elected chair at the organizational meeting, along with District 5 member John D. Wright as vice-chair.

All members of the board this year are new, with three incumbents who ran for re-election in November having been defeated.

In other organizational business, District 2 member W. Kevin Hazzard was selected as the board’s representative to the Maggie Walker Governor’s School Board and John Lumpkins Jr. was named representative to the Blue Ridge Virtual Governor’s School Board.

One matter of particular interest to those who regularly attend board meetings was a unanimous vote to change starting times for all regular and workshop meetings to 7 p.m., with regular meetings scheduled for the second Tuesday of the month and workshop meetings on the fourth Tuesday, all to be held at Goochland High School.

Discussion of the location of the meetings arose, with District 1 member Michael E. Payne bringing up the idea of moving board meetings to the Board of Supervisors meeting room at the county administration building but that idea was shelved for the time being.

The new board also unanimously approved a new Code of Ethics for itself, involving substantial revisions of the previous document, which was titled Code of Conduct.

The board approved its meeting schedule, which includes not only a public hearing Jan. 24 on the Schools Budget but a new workshop meeting Jan. 17 in an as yet to be determined format to facilitate input from the public and responses at the meeting by the board members.

“The idea is to open it up and make it more conversational,” explained Hazzard.

But the meat of the Jan. 4 meeting was a brief overview of the Schools Budget, expected to be adopted at month’s end. A more detailed presentation was scheduled to be presented at the Jan. 10 regular meeting.

Goochland Schools Superintendent Linda Underwood made the presentation, which involved revenue projections of just over $23,624,799 as opposed to projected expenditures of $24,174,035, for a shortfall of not quite $550,000.

On top of that were some additional requests, such as more foreign language teachers at Goochland High School and in the elementary schools and more personnel at the GHS/GMS library. Other items on the wish list were three interventions specialists, ROTC and more Career and Technical Education. All together, the added expenditures would be about another $500,000, said Underwood.

Underwood also discussed possible savings in the areas of contracting out some custodial services ($190,000), reducing school days and possible reorganization of departments and leadership.

Responding to an inquiry from Lumpkins, Underwood said the system could save about $100,000 for each school day eliminated. Goochland currently provides more than the minimum required number of instructional time of 180 days or 990 hours, according to the superintendent.

“It’s absolutely an opportunity to save,” said Hardy later in the week of reducing school days.

“The overview was just that, it’s too early in the process,” she said, when asked to evaluate the projected shortfall.

Two public comment periods gave time for a number or speakers.

Jane Christie told the board now is the time to review Virginia Retirement System and health insurance costs.

Jo D. Hoskins gave a tearful thanks to the new board members for taking on the task of leading the school system.

Michael McDermott suggested a number of changes, including video streaming of meetings, audio on the schools’ Web site (a change that has already been made), and moving to the BOS meeting room. He also asked why the budget document was not online before the meeting.

The board will meet every Tuesday in January at 7 p.m. at GHS, with budget approval tentatively scheduled for Jan. 31.