Pair ready for TPSB challenge

It was 1994. The Republicans gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as president of South Africa. Major League Baseball went on strike. Seventy-five Branch Davidian cult members died when they set their compound on fire near Waco, Texas. Nicole Brown Simpson, estranged wife of NFL star O.J. Simpson, was found murdered outside her West Los Angeles condominium. And it was the last year that a woman served on the Terrebonne Parish School Board n until now.

Sixteen-years ago major headlines shook the attention of newspaper readers and television news viewers. With the anticipated swearing in Tuesday of the first two women to serve on the Terrebonne Parish School Board in more than 1? decades, a long-standing status quo is sure to be shaken as well.

“They will be a valuable part of moving the district forward,” said Superintendent Philip Martin regarding the addition of Debi Benoit and Brenda Leroux Babin to the educational governing body.

Both Benoit and Babin were born in New Orleans but have spent the majority of their lives in Terrebonne Parish. Each has academic, instructional and research credentials, and both have expressed an aggressive enthusiasm about participating in the governing of public education.

Benoit is the current director of research grants at Nicholls State University. Prior to her taking on that job in 2003, she was the first-ever system-wide grant writer for Terrebonne Parish School District, and five years before that she was the first development director for Catholic schools in Terrebonne Parish. “I seem to have pioneering type positions,” she said.

In addition to having some professional classroom experience, Benoit has also served as chairwoman for the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Benoit stressed that her first concern regarding how the board operates is to update its approach to management in a way that benefits both students and district employees.

While sharing a focus on challenging students to improve their learning, Benoit said she wants to be an advocate for teachers and support staff in the district and see the establishment of long-range goal setting rather than month-by-month or even year-by-year limited planning.

“There is a lack of a strategic plan in general [for the school system],” Benoit said. “I think that is a number one priority. How do we decide how our money is spent if we don’t have a plan? [We need a] five-year plan, and break it down into one year goals and objectives.”

Benoit said that by taking a strategic approach to conducting the business of education the district would better be able to address situations related to budget cuts and reduced government funding. She also said talented teachers need to be protected from simple employment formulas that restrict their influence, and questions policies that often secures bad teachers in positions by virtue of having been part of the system for an extended period.

“I’d like to see a revamping of the reduction in force policy that they use moving staff due to budget cuts,” Benoit said. “[The board] is using the same policy that they have used for many, many, many years and it’s not been revised. I don’t think we need to lose our best and brightest only because they are the last ones in the system. That’s the way the RIF policy works right now n last in first out.”

Babin brings much of the same experience and attitude toward educational needs to the board as Benoit a decade into the 21st Century.

Having graduated from Nicholls State University, Babin taught English, calculus and computer science during a 17-year teaching career in the Terrebonne Parish School District. In 2000 she left teaching to become information technology manager at the Louisiana University Marine Consortium, and then returned to teaching at Fletcher Technical Community College.

Babin said that she has always wanted to be part of the school board, but because of her career was unable to do so when working within elementary and secondary public education.

“One thing [I want to see with the board] is to increase transparency and make more information available to the public about what’s going on in the school system,” Babin said. “Making more information available will improve our image.”

“The other thing is to improve the way professionals in the system are treated. Teachers go to school to become professionals in their jobs. They are not just workers. They need to be motivated in ways that they are not being motivated right now. They need to be treated like professionals,” Babin said.

Both Benoit and Babin said that they favor term limits and expressed opinions that past school boards had become stale in their operations due to members having been part of the panel for multiple decades. “[Many board members have] been in so long that they just didn’t bring any new concepts. They continued to operate with the concepts that they operated with since the beginning,” Benoit said. The new members also expressed a need to have a board that does not eliminate public input by becoming too closely knit as an exclusive panel.

“We need to have an advisory council to the school board,” Benoit said. “[The council] would consist of constituents including some teachers, some parents, and some business people. All those people are affected by the policies that school boards make and they have little to no input to that. I think it is important to know what’s going on in the trenches and take that when you consider policy.”

Donna Benoit n no relation to the new board member n is an algebra teacher at Houma Junior High School with 13 years experience. She expressed satisfaction in getting fresh faces on the school board.

“My biggest thing is that people on the school board need to be people who have spent [recent] time in education. I can tell you that kids three years ago are nothing like today. Even [former teachers] five years out of a classroom don’t have a clue what we’re going through,” she said.

Debi Benoit (left) and Brenda Babin intend to promote openness and accountability as they join the Terrebonne Parish School Board. Their presence marks the first time in 16 years that a woman has been a member of the educational governing body. MIKE NIXON