Supt.: Lafourche education weathering storm of cuts

Despite cuts in state and federal funding, the Lafourche Parish Public School District is continuing to progress in its development to offer the parish’s students and their parents more choices, Superintendent Jo Ann Matthews said at Monday’s Bayou Industrial Group luncheon.

The district will soon make available a K-12 virtual school program that would only require students to appear at a physical school to take end-of-quarter tests.

The parish is also in the process of opening a Type I charter school, and planning is under way for a career magnet school to be built in Lockport.

“In Lafourche Parish, there are almost 500 kids that are home-schooled,” Matthews said. “They may be able to perform to the level that the state wants at (graduation), but they may not. It is our obligation to help and make sure we offer appropriate programs.”

The career magnet center is anticipated to be between 40,000 and 45,000 square feet in size. Instructors here will focus on teaching the skills needed to enter the workforce immediately after graduation.

After the meeting, Lafourche Parish Secondary Education Supervisor Kevin George said the following eight career pathways would be offered at the career center: welding/fitting; culinary art; integrated production technology; carpentry; automotive; allied health; cosmetology; and marine operation.

The specific curriculum is still being decided upon through meetings with representatives of the area’s business community. George said he has met with Bollinger Shipyards, Edison Chouest Offshore and John Deere, to name a few.

The career center will be open to juniors and seniors and will accept only students who meet certain guidelines.

“This is not going to be a place that’s going to be a dumping ground,” George said. “This is going to be a career magnet center. Kids are going to have to want to go there, and they’re going to have to qualify to go there.”

Bayou Community Academy, the charter school, is slated to open in Thibodaux in August.

The school board will oversee management of the school, which offers parents another choice in their children’s educational options.

“Our goal as a school system is to educate each and every child in Lafourche Parish,” Matthews said. “It doesn’t matter to us whether they are in a parochial school or they are in a public school as long as they are in school and they’re learning and we can provide oversight.”

Matthews, in her address to the area’s business leaders, painted a rosy picture of the district’s fiscal situation when compared to the rest of the state and when considering the unfunded mandates state officials have imposed.

During the 2011 fiscal year, which ended in June, Lafourche’s spent $9,514 per pupil, and the state-issued Minimum Foundation Program contribution was $4,900, Business Manager Don Gaudet said.

Two years earlier, Lafourche’s MFP allotment was $5,200.

“[The MFP’s] participation in the education of Lafourche students is shrinking,” he said.

The state funding cuts have been amplified by the district’s other obligations. One of these is an essential doubling of its payment into the state’s teacher retirement system from nearly $5 million to nearly $10 million over the last two years.

The Lafourche School Board authorized a reduction in force in April, cutting 67 teaching positions and laying off five certified teachers.

“Luckily, we have had a stable and growing tax base,” Gaudet said. “We’re having a little bit of a retreat this year on the sales taxes, but we’ve been able to maintain a fund balance that should allow us to weather the storm.”

The superintendent echoed Gaudet’s report.

“I want to assure you that we’re financially sound,” Matthews said. “Thank God, because many districts, I think, are going to go under, but we’ve been very productive with that and looking at what we have to do to maintain that.”

Matthews has served as the district’s superintendent since 2006. She has a bachelor’s degree in special education, a masters-plus-30 in education and is in the process of completing a doctorate program in education at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.