Four Terrebonne schools must wait for modular classrooms

The Terrebonne Parish School Board amended its 2007-2008 building budget, eliminating more than $3 million for possible classroom modulars for the parish.

The school board had originally intended to erect prefabricated, eight-classroom modular buildings on the campuses of nine elementary and one middle school to ease overcrowding.

However, Finance Chairman Rickie Pitre told board members at last Wednesday’s meeting that the modular buildings price had increased from $574,200 to $757,940 each.

In response, the school board, in a 5-4 vote, cut $3 million earmarked to erect modular buildings at Caldwell Middle and Lisa Park, Oakshire and Broadmoor elementary schools.

Board members Donald Duplantis, Roger Dale DeHart, L.P. Bordelon and Richard Jackson voted against removing the schools from the list slated to receive modular buildings.

Among the schools that will get modular buildings in the coming year are Acadian, East Houma, Bourg, Honduras and Schriever elementary schools.

Construction of modular buildings is currently under way at Coteau-Bayou Blue Elementary School.

Superintendent Ed Richard explained that the space was needed at several of the elementary schools to house students added to the system’s rolls through the state’s LA 4 pre-kindergarten program.

School board member Roosevelt Thomas balked at the addition of four schools – Caldwell Middle, Lisa Park, Oakshire and Broadmoor elementary schools – which added $3 million to the building budget.

He asked board members to remove the four schools from the list, sending the request to add modular classes at those schools back to the Building and Sites Committee.

“We should work with the ones we have and then come back and pick up the other ones,” he said.

Both Pitre and school board Chairman Clark Bonvillain agreed with Thomas’ motion.

“If you look at the report from Mr. Merlin Lirette of The Merlin Group LTD, he states that the six previous budgeted schools will be the only ones getting the modular buildings for the next school term,” Pitre said. “Therefore, we should wait to make those usable and then come back for the other ones.”

Bonvillain also favored waiting for the final four school additions. “We can certainly come back to the other schools once some work has been done on the previously budgeted modular buildings,” he said.

In opposition to Thomas’s substitute motion, DeHart and Duplantis argued that three of the requests for modular buildings – at Schriever, Coteau-Bayou Blue and Honduras elementary schools – were added in October.

“I don’t see a problem with adding the other four schools now, especially if we are going to come back and add them later,” DeHart said.

Prior to the final vote, Broadmoor Elementary Principal Pam McCann said she has invited board members to visit her school to see the crowding firsthand.

“The first time you guys brought this up about the modular buildings, I personally asked each of you to come to the school so that you can see the overcrowding and none of you showed up,” she said.

Of the nine-panel board, DeHart was the only board member to visit the school.

McCann said repeated requests to hire additional teachers to handle the influx of students have been denied because Broadmoor does not have adequate space to house the classrooms.

It’s a problem shared at all four of the schools cut from the list of those to receive modular classrooms, Richard said.

Thomas’s substitute motion to wait to put modular units on the four campuses passed by a 5-4 vote, with Jackson, Bordelon, DeHart and Duplantis voting against the measure.