Jeannine Lejeune/Crowley Post-Signal
The Acadia Parish School Board’s April meeting agenda was light and dashed through Monday night.
With all but one member present – Rev. James Proctor – the board’s unanimous votes of 7-0 approved nine items in its routine items.
The board, while reiterating the millage renewals on the April 29 ballot, approved a press release to be issued regarding the election.
The millages on the ballot parishwide include the following:
— Proposition 1 for 15.28 mills, dedicated to the purchase of textbooks, technology and instructional materials, salaries and benefits, maintenance, staff development and extracurricular programs. The millage was first enacted in 1989 and has been renewed in 1999 and 2008.
— Proposition 2 for 5.10 mills, dedicated to the maintenance of school facilities throughout the parish. It has been in place for more than 50 years.
Upon unanimous approval of the press release, board members mentioned the importance of going out and vote April 29 and making an informed decision on the two millage continuations.
The board also approved the Head Start program’s grant application, which has already been passed by the program’s Policy Council.
The recommendations of the both the Budget and Finance Committee – advertising sealed bids for a new gymansium at Iota Elementary and advertising for and conducting a salvage sale on Thursday, April 27 – and the Personnel, Insurance and Curriculum Committee – the school calendar for 2017-18 and the requests from Iota Middle and Church Point Middle to attend the National Junior Beta Convention in Orlando in June – were also approved.
Regarding the trips to Orlando, board members commented that having the club sponsors on hand to explain the trip and the actions that got them qualified to attend was a nice addition and made voting for the measures even easier. In the long run, being able to acknowledge the groups’ accomplishments and understand the competitions and such was also an added bonus. They added they hope to see more of that in the future.
Trips to Nashville, Tennessee, in July for the Midland High FCCLA Club and Oklahoma City in May for the Crowley High FFA Chapter were unable to make it onto the March committee meeting’s agenda and no further information, outside of the request letter was given for these trips. Both trips were approved by the board Monday night, but members stated this was a prime example of a chance for them to be informed even more as well as acknowledge the great work being done by these individuals.
Finally, the dates of Monday, April 24, for board committee meetings and Monday, May 1, for the board’s regular meeting were also approved.