TPSD deals with teacher shortage

The Terrebonne Parish School District has roughly 60 certified-teaching vacancies, a fluid shortfall that continues to grow, the district’s supervisor of finance and statistics said last week.

Becky Breaux revealed the figure while speaking to an education task force composed by the school district and the Houma-Terrebonne Chamber of Commerce in the wake of TPSD’s failed property-tax proposal earlier this year. She said the number of empty positions is “a lot more” than previous years. Across the board, Terrebonne has about 1,100 certified-teaching positions, she said following the meeting.

Terrebonne officials have cited the district’s salary structure as an impediment to hiring new teachers; Terrebonne ranks 47 of 69 Louisiana districts in average teacher pay. As teachers leave for various reasons, it’s harder to replace them because the levels are not competitive, Breaux said.

But some task force members said evidence is insufficient to ascribe salary levels as the sole contributor to the shortfall. The group’s facilitator Harold Suire, president of Baton Rouge-based Education Research and Information Services, said he wanted to interview teachers who left Terrebonne’s system to better define the truth.

In the meantime, Terrebonne has addressed the shortfall with long-term substitute teachers and by stepping up recruiting efforts, Breaux said. Former TPSD instructors, including some who retired at least 13 years ago, have received letters asking them to return to the classroom.

Terrebonne also pays 100 percent of healthcare premiums. There was dissension among the task force as to how much this bolsters the district’s total compensatory package, because, anecdotally, younger people seem to value health insurance less than the amount of a paycheck.

The Lafourche Parish School District, which also has about 1,100 certified teachers, does not currently have any vacancies, system spokesman Floyd Benoit said.

“It’s been a good year,” he said. “We used to lose some to Terrebonne because our insurance costs are higher.”

Debate over what has caused the teacher shortfall was indicative of the meeting’s tenor. Even basic figures and philosophies are being contested and hashed out during this process, largely fact-finding at this stage. For the second time Breaux left the meeting with a list of information to provide at a follow-up gathering; on it were about 25 items.

The school board proposed earlier this year a 32-mill property tax increase – set to raise approximately $25 million per year for capital improvements and teacher pay – but voters overwhelming rejected the proposal. The chamber voiced staunch opposition because of what it perceived as a plan lacking specifics.

After the vote, the chamber and school board announced a joint effort to better identify the district’s needs, how to meet them and how to present the ideas to the public.

“It’s going to be hard to get a consensus,” Suire said following the meeting.

The 14-member task force is comprised of local business and education leaders and other volunteers.

Jennifer Armand, chairwoman of the task force and the chamber of commerce, initially expressed hope that the process would be complete before Christmas. She said last week the timeline could be extended if the representatives need more time to reach a decision.

Breaux’s presentation consumed much of the two-hour meeting last week. In it she provided hard figures that point to bleak financial realities.

The system’s revenue from oil-and-gas leases has plummeted from $3 million in 2005-06 to nearly nothing in 2012-13.

Sales tax revenues – from a cumulative 2.08-percent levy – have climbed annually since 2009, when they bottomed out at $44 million, but they’re still at least $2 million less than the $52 million collected in 2008-09.

At the same time, the district’s contribution rates into employees’ and teachers’ retirement systems have spiked, as per a national trend ignited during the recession, which submarined public investments and widened the gap between levels of of what retirement funds could afford to pay and what their eventual liabilities totaled.

Should the group reach accord on how to move forward in assisting the school system, they will have to determine how to market the idea to the public. Suire has already conducted a community survey, which revealed a bi-polar mindset. For example, an equal number of people polled opposed using in any form property or sales taxes.

The task force is set to discuss how to pitch its findings in more depth at future meetings, they are already cognizant of how some information is perceived. The relevancy of school officials’ pronouncements that the district’s buildings average 60 years old was one messaging tactic questioned by some group members.

The task force also studied the former Blue Print for Progress millage, which the school board allowed to lapse in 2000 amid what was described as an economic downturn. The 9.2-mill tax was dedicated to building and capital needs. That school officials didn’t present it to the voters then, some on the task force reasoned, could be an asset in pitching to the public that school officials have been good stewards of public money.

The task force meets again at 4 p.m., Thursday, Nov. 8, at the Terrebonne Parish Library North Branch, 4130 W. Park Ave., Gray. Officials with the parish assessor’s and sales and use tax offices will present a parishwide financial picture before focusing on the portion of revenue the school board collects.