Dr. Isaac Espy and the Demopolis City Board of Education probably won’t be getting many Christmas cards at the end of the fall semester.

At Wednesday night’s meeting, Espy encouraged the school board to amend Demopolis High School’s exam exemption policy.

Starting this fall, students will not be able to exempt fall exams. However, they will in the spring semester.

While the decision may not have been popular in the short term, it will be beneficial in the long term.

“The way it’s set up right now, we have capable students graduate Demopolis High School and have never taken an exam,” said Espy to the board.

“When they get to college they are surprised when they have to take an exam at the end of the semester.”

According to Espy, all students in grades 9-12 will have to take a comprehensive exam for each class at the end of the semester.

“This will be a true comprehensive examination covering items from week one through week 18,” said Espy. “Students will receive direct instruction on how to prepare for the exams.”

Espy said that he had met with his staff earlier and that’d all agreed to the policy change.

“I think that we’re doing the students a disservice by not giving them an exam,” said board member Gary Holman.

This moves put Demopolis High and Demopolis Middle in line with each other in terms of examinations.

The School Board also got their first look at the proposed budget for the 2007 fiscal year.

The proposed budget will give Demopolis Schools a working bottom line of $18,183490, an 11.1 percent change from 2006.

Another item that popped out from this is that the capital outlay in the budget has grown 953.7 percent.

That’s not a typo.

According to board members and office staff, that inordinate number tied to the $215,000 was a result of having only $22,000 in last year’s Capital Outlay plans.

Overall, Demopolis Schools will have an expenditure total of $18,295,156, a change of 9,4 percent from a year ago.

While the budget is currently in the negotiation phase, it will be reviewed a second time when the board meets on August 14. The board did, however unanimously approve the financial statements of the school.

The Demopolis School Board also accepted resignations from Fred D. Moore, the administration’s SAP director, Diane Farnham who teaches at US Jones, Lisa Luca, the school system’s bilingual aide, Angeletta Toney and Ron Smith.

Parents are reminded that if your child is going into the DMS that Aug. 7 is the day to pick up class schedules.

The times are:

Sixth grade from 1-1:50p.m.,

Seventh grade from 2-2:50 p.m.,

Eighth grade from 3-3:50.