Jefferson County Schools Supt. Dr. Craig Pouncey wants to have a talk.

Pouncey said Friday morning that he is planning a meeting for parents in Mt. Olive whose children are currently zoned for Gardendale schools, to update them on the county’s side of the separation by the new Gardendale City Schools system and what he expects to happen in the coming school year.

That meeting would occur next week, though a time and a venue have not been set yet.

Meanwhile, Pouncey continued to press his view that the “final order” issued by Alabama Supt. Dr. Tommy Bice regarding the separation isn’t final at all.

“I see that as not a final order, but as a time out,” Pouncey told a group of reporters after a special JefCoEd board meeting on Friday. “He said, for the next 12 months, this is what I [Bice] expect. Now y’all go back and try to resolve these differences and meet with me at the end of the month to give me an updated report on your progress…. There’s a fundamental difference of interpretation of what was released from the state superintendent.”

Pouncey and his Gardendale counterpart, Supt. Dr. Patrick Martin, are to meet with Bice in Montgomery on March 31 to update Bice on the progress, or lack of same, in the separation-agreement negotiations.

The fact that Bice did not issue a final order that is truly final didn’t seem to faze Pouncey.

“Under the authority of the state superintendent, he has broad powers, and I have to respect that,” Pouncey said.

Bice issued what he called an “amended final order” two weeks ago, which stated that the Gardendale system will not have to pay JefCoEd for any costs associated with the new Gardendale High School. That order was in contrast with a preliminary ruling he had issued two weeks prior, in which he fixed a cost — an “exit fee,” as Gardendale officials refer to it — of $8.1 million. That figure, in turn, was far less than the amount JefCoEd sought of more than $33 million.

Pouncey was not happy with the preliminary amount, and even less so with the zero amount in the final order.

“We’re at a pretty big impasse with a difference of understanding over who deserves what,” Pouncey said. “I’m confident in my board, that we have a legal and moral obligation to protect all children in this system. The equitable share of what Jefferson County invested in that school… is around $33 million.”

The county board met in closed executive session for more than an hour Friday, for discussion of what the system’s attorney referred to as “pending litigation.”