Aug. 7-8: Cerebral Palsy Telethon (Houma)
August 3, 2010
Houma’s next power plant may be in M.C.
August 5, 2010
As summer draws to a close, the most devastating words any Tri-parish grade-school child could hear are getting closer to reality. Beginning Monday, alarm clocks will ring at a painfully early hour and parents will say those frightening words – “Time to go back to school.”
Students returning to class, however, may notice some changes, most of which are the result of budget cuts school districts are implementing to keep their finances operating in the black.
The deepest cuts were made in Lafourche Parish, where 92 employees – including 65 teachers – were let go this summer in the face of a $7.1 million deficit.
This reduction in force will create a greater student to teacher ratio, according to Lafourche Parish Public Schools Communications Specialist Floyd Benoit.
“On average, there will be six to eight more [students per classroom],” Benoit said. “Some may have 10 or 11 [more]. Some may just have three or four [more]. It just depends on the school and the numbers.”
And the increase in student-to-teacher ratio is a serious concern to the school system.
“There’s plenty of research that shows smaller class sizes are better for student learning,” Benoit said. “We have good employees, teachers and principals that are going to make due with what they have to, but it’s not the best.”
District officials reason that although the district is operating with fewer teachers, most remaining teachers are certified.
“The good side with some of the employees we lost is now we’re going to have our highest percentage ever of highly certified, highly qualified teachers,” Benoit said.
Benoit said another noticeable change in Lafourche is a 6 percent cut in school allotments for paper, classroom supplies and extra curricular activities.
In Terrebonne Parish, all certified teachers kept their jobs, with the budget cuts affecting central office workers, master teachers, clerical employees and bus drivers.
Superintendent Philip Martin said the cuts were made in a way that students won’t notice anything different when classes resume Monday.
“We have faired fairly well in that regard, although we had some significant financial hurdles to cross. We have crossed these hurtles and now we’re moving on,” Martin said. “We’re looking forward to the school year. Schools are fully staffed.”
But most importantly, the student-to-teacher ratio will remain intact.
“The classroom has been fairly insulated from many of the cuts, so there was very little in that regard,” Martin said.
Helping matters is a $4.7 million grant Terrebonne Parish received for school improvement.
“We’re excited about the potential for that, and we’re very pleased to have received it,” Martin said. “There were 150 eligible applicants. There were between 20 and 40 that got awarded, and we received five, so we’re very proud of that.”
Although budget cuts are virtually seamless, Martin said students can expect an immediate change: the busses.
“One thing they may notice is we renewed the lease with our busses, and they’re going to be implementing some air conditioned busses. If they’re lucky enough to get one of those busses, those kids will notice a change,” Martin said.
In St. Mary Parish, the school board voted to combat their budget cuts by dipping into their reserve fund.
Taking $2.15 million out of the $10 million fund allowed St. Mary to minimize the cuts it would have to make.
“Our budget that the board approved was a deficit of $2.15 million, and that’s a legal budget, because we’re going to be paying that with various contingency funds that we’ve set aside for such use,” said St. Mary Parish Chief Financial Officer Alton Perry.
The school system chose to cut 22 teachers this summer, but with more than 22 retiring, Perry touts St. Mary didn’t need to give a pink slip to anyone.
“We’ve been better off than Terrebonne and Lafourche. They had to cut a significant amount of teachers.,We know because they’ve been applying here,” Perry said. “We would have had to cut another 30 or 40 teachers if we weren’t going to use reserve funds. At that point, it does start impacting the classroom. What we did here (moving reserve cash), did not.”
And because St. Mary kept almost all of its structural programs in place, Perry said students will not be affected.
“We don’t feel like we’ve done anything this past year to affect our classrooms negatively,” he said.
First grade teacher Donna LeCompte gets her classroom prepared at nearby Bourg Elementary School. Over the course of the summer, all three parish public school systems were forced to trim budgets for the coming year. CASEY GISCLAIR
