District’s $9.1M reserve to prevent layoffs

While neighboring parishes contemplate staff layoffs, the St. Mary Parish School Board intends to use $9.1 million in unreserved funding to shore up its budget.

The school system’s chief executive officer, Alton Ray Perry, delivered the good news to the board at last week’s regular meeting.

“We will not have any layoffs before we start the 2010-11 school year,” Perry said.

However, Perry said the school district has implemented RIF – reduction in force policy by attrition. If a teacher or supervisor retires or leaves the system in the coming months, Perry said it is unlikely that outside personnel will be hired to fill that vacancy.

“We are fortunate to have these financial reserves to tap into,” board member Wayne Deslatte said. “It’s certainly good to know that we’re not going to cut jobs, at least for the 2010-11 school years.”

School Superintendent Dr. Donald Aguillard said he has no plans to “dismantle issues that we have in place – programs, etc. – that affect our students.

“The parish has been on a tremendous academic momentum wave over the past couple of years and I can’t see us doing anything that’s going to destroy that,” he continued. “We have deployed our resources, we believe, very strategically to try to maximize the success of our students.”

He said avoiding layoffs would be a “huge morale boost” for staffers.