UPDATED WITH STORY: School Board members learn about budget, ethics, Act 1

CENTERVILLE — Thursday was a day of learning for new St. Mary School Board members, a time to get acquainted with the posts they won in the Nov. 8 elections.

Five new board members attended Thursday’s orientation session at the Central Office Complex: Rhonda Dennis and Andrew Mancuso of Morgan City, Chad Paradee of Berwick, Lindsey Anslem of Bayou Vista and Murphy Pontiff of Franklin.

They’ll join incumbents Alaina Black of Morgan City, Ginger Griffin and Marilyn LaSalle of Patterson, Tammie Moore of Four Corners, and Joseph Foulcard and Debra Jones, an interim appointee, of Franklin.

The first regular meeting of the new term will be Jan. 12.

One big job awaiting the board will be the selection of a new superintendent.

Dr. Teresa Bagwell has announced that she won’t seek an extension of her contract when it expires in June.

It’s obviously a vital decision, one made more so by a decade-old Louisiana law called Act 1, as board counsel Bob Hammonds explained.

The act was one of the education reforms advocated by Gov. Bobby Jindal and state Superintendent Paul Pastorek in 2012. The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education website notes that the act allows districts to set personnel standards and policies and to reward teachers based on effectiveness as well as experience.

But the biggest change was that it “designates local superintendents and principals as the final authority in personnel decisions, while at the same time holding them accountable for student performance,” according to BESE’s description of the act.

The act was promoted as a way to prevent school board members from going beyond hiring and firing into meddling.

Hammonds said one school official in another parish noted that hardly anyone calls to get an English teacher fired. But “there’s hardly a week that goes by without pressure to fire a football coach.”

The board members retain the power to set personnel policies and write job descriptions.

“They still have authority, just not as much as they had before Act 1,” Hammonds said.

The attorney also noted that ethics education requirements for school board members are among the strictest in the state.

The education can help members avoid ethical conflicts, like two he cited from other parishes.

In one, a newly elected member had to resign after learning that her election meant that her father’s electrical supply operation could no longer do business with the district, eliminating half the company’s business.

In the other case, a board member whose daughter sought an administration position was found in violation even though he had recused himself from the hiring decision. The Ethics Board ruled that he violated the standards because he participated in the creation of the position.

The board members also got some details about the budget.

The general fund budget is about $85.6 million. Nearly six dollars in every 10 comes from the state in the form of Minimum Foundation Program funding. Another 25% comes from sales taxes, and 13% comes from property taxes.

Eighty percent of the spending goes toward salaries and benefits.

The parish is also divided into three maintenance districts, each of which has its own tax base to fund maintenance and construction. The budget for District 1, the area west of Calumet, is $2.1 million; District 2, from Calumet to the Atchafalaya, $2.0 million; and District 3, the parish east of the Atchafalaya, $2.4 million.

The numbers led Foulard, whose election district is part of the western St. Mary maintenance district, to wonder whether a single, parishwide maintenance district would be more fair to west St. Mary.
Chief Financial Officer Alton Perry replied that a consolidation proposal failed badly seven years ago. And he said the west St. Mary maintenance district has more high schools than the others.

“High schools eat up the funds,” Perry said.

Franklin Senior, West St. Mary and Centerville High are in the westernmost maintenance district.