School board consolidation stricken down

Le Cirque éducation program threatened with budget axe
March 21, 2012
Local voters take to polls Saturday
March 21, 2012
Le Cirque éducation program threatened with budget axe
March 21, 2012
Local voters take to polls Saturday
March 21, 2012

Vocal support emerged last week from inside the Lafourche Parish School Board’s ranks regarding consolidating the system’s representative districts from 15 to nine.


Ronald Pere, Dist. 8, proposed presenting a nine-district map to the public along with three 15-district reapportionment plans at the school board’s next regular meeting; the measure failed without a second.

“At a time when we’re doing Reduction in Forces, cutting our programs, increasing our pupil-teacher ratios, paying for increased cost of insurance and retirement benefits and having to absorb the costs of unfunded mandates, it seems a fiscal responsibility that we reduce the size of our board,” Pere told the board’s redistricting committee.


After the measure failed, the committee scheduled the first of three public hearings for the three plans designed by South Central Planning and Development, none of which alter the number of parish educational representatives.


The public can chime in on the plans at the school board’s next regular meeting, 7 p.m. on April 4 at the School Board Office, 805 E. 7th St. The nine-district proposal will not be up for public discussion.

Though he had no support from the committee’s other three voting members, Pere didn’t present the plan in solitude, and supporters said they would continue to pursue consolidation.


Greg Stall, elected in 2010, spoke in favor of a nine-member board, as did Larry Pitre. Marian Fertitta, also elected in 2010, has said she supports the change. None serves on the committee, but Stall and Pere did say the matter would introduced before the full board. The proposal would need at least eight supporting votes to reach the public hearing stage.


“The board members who oppose it, they have valid points as well,” Stall said. “We have people who feel one way and people who feel another, and I think in the end I was just in favor of letting the public weigh in on (consolidation).

“I believe that it may resurface again.”


The committee’s voting members are Rhoda Caldwell, Lawrence Mounic, Louis Thibodaux and Pere. Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews, spokesman Floyd Benoit and supervisor of child welfare and attendance Ray Bernard also sit on the committee. Matthews was absent from last week’s meeting.


Pere’s plan would align the school board’s districts with those of the parish council.

Proponents of the change say it would reduce some of the system’s expenses, mostly in the form of eliminated salaries and educational workshop costs.


It would also streamline communication between board members and the superintendent and reduce the cost on the parish clerk of court’s office and state Secretary of State for holding elections, Stall said.


Opponents said less districts mean larger districts, which would likely be more taxing on the board members, some of whom hold full-time jobs in addition to the public service position.

A smaller board would allow a rogue group to hold operations hostage, similar to the time shortly after the council’s reduction, when 5-to-4 voting tallies prevented the parish president from having a budget approved for three years, Boyd said.


Eliminating districts would also force some incumbents to run against one another for re-election.

“We are one of the most outstanding boards in the state of Louisiana,” said Caldwell, president of the board. “I don’t want to be compared to the parish council, and I have a feeling that a lot of other people don’t either.”

Voting districts are redrawn every 10 years to account for changes in the population, per the U.S. Census Bureau. The Department of Justice approved the parish council’s changes last year, but the school board – because its next election isn’t until 2014 – has until 2013 to draft proposals and select a layout that will geographically govern its next two elections.

Julie Breaux, Dist. 9, said the board should look to impose term limits, which would in turn restrict availability for board members to participate in retirement and health insurance benefit programs. She also insinuated that board members’ salaries should be examined.

”I think there’s other places we can save money,” she said.

Reducing the board by six members would save the system $72,000 in salaries each year, according to Fertitta.

The proposal’s opponents cited consternation among the nine members who make up the Lafourche Parish Council. The entity, maligned throughout the community because of a historical unwillingness to work together and subsequent delays in acting on important issues, consolidated from 15 districts after the 2000 Census.

“When you get the parish council to do better than us, then I’ll consider it,” Mounic, Dist. 15, said.

Boyd qualified a statement about taking on more constituents by saying he likes to work.

“If it’s working, why try to fix it? I get calls. If you go to a larger district, I’m telling you, that’s a lot of calls, a lot of work,” Boyd, Dist. 3, said.

Neighboring parishes such as Terrebonne, St. Charles, Jefferson and Plaquemines have nine-member school boards. St. James has seven board members, St Mary has 11 and St. Tammany has 15.

In terms of 2011-12 student population in the districts listed above, Jefferson has the largest, with 45,704. St. Tammany enrolled 37,058, Terrebonne’s is 18,589 and Lafourche is at 14,356, according to the state Department of Education.

The Terrebonne Parish School Board consolidated to nine districts 10 years ago. Dennis Chiasson, Dist. 10, said the chambers of commerce approached those boards but not the school boards because of discord on the Lafourche council.

“The parish went to nine and it was 5-4 for four years,” Chiasson said. “The (school) board was never approached to (consolidate).”

Pere said the make-up of the board is more important than the amount.

“It’s not the numbers that created the problems,” Pere said. “It’s people on the boards that created the problems. Let’s not leave here saying, ‘We’re not going to get nine members because it looks like nine members creates a problem.’