St. Mary School Board April 2010 meeting

Alton Ray Perry, chief executive officer of the St. Mary Parish School System, had good news for the School Board last night, no layoffs.

Perry said that unlike their counterparts in neighboring parishes, the St. Mary Parish School System has $9.1 million in its contingency fund that’s unreserved for emergencies.

“We will not have any layoffs before we start the 2010-2011 school year,” Perry said.

However, Perry said the district has implemented the RIF policy or reduction in force policy, by attrition, meaning if a teacher or supervisor retires or leaves the system, chances are good that the district will not hire outside personnel to fill that particular vacancy.

Board Member Wayne Deslatte commented, “We are fortunate to have these financial reserves to tap into. And it’s certainly good to know that we’re not going to cut jobs, at least for the 2010-2011 school year.”

Dr. Donald Aguillard, superintendent of the St. Mary Parish School System, said he has no plans to “dismantle issues that we have in place, programs, etc, that affect our students.”

“This 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,” Aguillard said. “We have deployed our resources, we believe, very strategically, to try to maximize the success of our students. Everyone has been working hard to get to this point.”

Aguillard further explained, “Knowing that we think we can continue all of our instructional programs, is going to serve as a huge morale boost for our people, understanding that we’re not talking about rifting our employees as other districts have already indicated.”

To the board, he said, “I want to thank all of you in realizing that all of our efforts within this district are something that we don’t want to diminish in any way possible until we have absolutely run out of resources.”

Perry said that even though the district is down 11.9 percent in tax collections this year, compared to its 2009-2010 budget, and even though it is currently 15.5 percent down from where it was at this time in 2009, the district has a rough total of $18.7 million in its coffers, with $9.1 being unreserved.

“We will have ample time during the 2010-2011 school year to watch the economy, across the country and within the state. We’re fortunate to have time and room to make decisions with a long studied approach, instead of in a rush mode as unfortunately, some school systems have had to do,” Perry said. “We are fortunate to have these financial reserves to tap into.”

In another fiscal matter Thursday, the board renewed the system’s employees’ health insurance with Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Louisiana, at a 6.6 percent increase, which will have to be picked up by all employees who are enrolled in the system. Currently, the board picks up about 60 percent of the costs of the premium for all employees.

The rate increase will change an employee’s individual deductible from $750 to $1,000, and an employee’s family deductible from $2,250 to $3,000.
The new policy will also change the individual out-of-pocket maximum from $3,750 to $4,000, and the family out-of-pocket maximum from $8,250 to $9,000.

A spokesman with Blue Cross/Blue Shield told the board that the reason from the increase stems from last year’s records which show St. Mary Parish paid $11.3 million into the insurance system, but Blue Cross paid out $13 million in costs, all related to St. Mary Parish customers.

In other business, the board accepted a $99,675 bid from the St. Mary Community Action Agency of Franklin, to purchase the former G.W. Hamilton Elementary School in Baldwin. Hamilton is one of four west end St. Mary Parish Elementary Schools that were closed at the end of the 2008-2009 school year, to consolidate students into the new Raintree Elementary School in Charenton.

Aguillard said that accepting community action’s bid was the first step in turning over ownership of the school. “Now we will move into an actual sale of the school with the agency.”

And in another matter, Aguillard noted to the board that his staff is busy working on grant money for a variety of projects, $43 million in grant total.

Two grants, which are funded by the Louisiana Department of Education, would require the board to hire two Master Teachers who would work individually at Franklin Jr. High School and B. Edward Boudreaux Middle school, schools who scored the parish’s lowest performance scores.

He said another project, called “Everybody Graduates”, could yield $400,000 additional dollars for the district, if St. Mary nabbed the grant award.