Harlan Kirgan
St. Landry Parish voters are asked on Saturday to make a decision on two School Board tax proposals that, if passed, would raise school employee pay and begin a $99 million capital improvement project.
Voters must approve a 12.1 mill tax for a 20-year building plan and an 11.3 mill property tax that would raise about $7 million a year for 10 years to pay for a $3,000 raise for certified employees and a $2,000 raise for other workers.
Both taxes must pass to go in effect.
If passed, the total school millage rate would go from 20.52 mills to 43.92 mills. The last school property tax passed in the parish was in 1986, the pamphlet stated.
According to a School Board pamphlet on the election, the combined monthly cost for a homeowner with a house valued at 75,000 or less would be zero. Increased would be:
— $5 for a house valued at $100,000.
— $14.50 for a house valued at $150,000.
— $24.50 for a house valued at $200,000.
— $34 for a house valued at $250,000.
— $43.50 for a house valued at $43.50.
— $53.50 for a house valued at $350,000.
The pamphlet stated the average school district millage rate is 45 in the state.
The newest school in the parish is the St. Landry Accelerated Transition School where the main building dates to 2005. The oldest main building is Arnaudville Elementary School dating to 1922.
Other schools have had additions and alterations over the years with the newest being Leonville Elementary.
The building plan was approved at the School Board’s March 8 meeting with unanimous consent for all but the Opelousas and Beau Chene area proposals.
Opelousas Board member Randy Wagley argued that Park Vista Elementary should be left alone.
“I’m not convinced the different grade configurations are the solution to what ails our schools in the city Opelousas or anywhere in the parish, for that matter,” Wagley said.
Park Vista was a C school in the 2017 state grades. All other schools in Opelousas, except the A-graded Magnet Academy for Cultural Arts, had state performance grades of Ds and Fs.
If approved the Opelousas schools would eventually be broken into a pre-kindergarten, kindergarten to third grade, fourth to fifth grade, sixth to eighth grade and ninth to 12th grade schools.
The school plan would be a hardship to parents, Wagley said. “How can we get them engaged in three different schools?”
Arnaudville member Huey Wyble made a similar plea for Arnaudville and Leonville elementary schools in that he wanted to separate their seventh and eighth graders from attending a new junior high planned on the Beau Chene High School campus.
Also at the March 8 meeting, Superintendent Patrick Jenkins said, “I believe that we can transform our community when we transform the educational community because education and economics go together. They are not separate. If you expect companies to come here the fist thing they are going to ask is ‘tell me about the schools.’ They are not coming when we have Ds and F schools. We are so much better than this.”
Eunice is to get a new pre-kindergarten to fifth-grade elementary school on the Highland Elementary campus at an estimated cost of $17.8 million. The school would be designed for an enrollment of 657 students.
Other new schools in the plan are a pre-K to fifth-grade elementary on the North Central High School campus; a new junior high on the Beau Chene High School campus; and a new high school, which may be a pre-K through high school, at Port Barre.
Highland Elementary would be the only school to close in the next academic year if the tax passes.
Starting pay for a teacher with no experience is $38,000. Passage of the tax would raise that to $41,000 a year. As of June 30,2017, the average classroom teachers’ salary including extra compensation was $46,069. Without the extra compensation the average pay was $44,148.
The most recent audit of the school system stated there were 567 classroom teachers as of June 30, 2017.
The School Board’s current budget states there are about 2,000 school district employees.
The budgeted revenues are $136,927,734 and expenditures are $144,573,736.
The propositions come to voters as the district looks to reverse, particularly in Opelousas, declining state accountability scores.
In state performance scores, the parish ranked 55th in the state out of 70 districts and was a C district. St. Landry Parish district performance scores have shown little growth since 2015 when the score was 71.1. This year the school district had a 71.7 score.
The overall state grade was B, an increase from C in 2016. The state score is 86.8, up from 83 in 2016.