School Board discusses ways to cut budget for 2016-17 year

The Evangeline Parish School Board Executive Committee held a meeting on Tuesday, and the main topic was making cuts to climb out of the $1,250,000.00 deficit the district is facing.
One way the district is looking to save on expenses is by doing away with separate buses for James Stephens Montessori and by utilizing platoon bus routes. Platoon bus routes means that bus drivers may now have to pick up students and drop them off at their school, and then go pick up other students and bring them to whatever school they attend.
Cutting the districts spending could also be done by combining smaller advanced placement (AP) classes with regular classes, which would result in a lower number of teachers being needed. If this is done, the teacher will teach like they would normally, but they will have to supply the students in the AP classes with different assignments from the students in the regular class.
According to Chief Financial Officer Amy Lafleur, “this could save the district anywhere between $750,000.00 and $900,000.00 because this is based on the cost of teachers with hospitalization.”
The other area that the executive committee discussed cutting was the paraprofessionals, or teacher aids.
Based on the student population and state guideline the district could lose 12 paraprofessionals.
Lafleur also informed the board that, “pre-K will be over staffed for the next school year because there will be less students.”
Lafleur went on to say, “We have two schools with less then 10 preschool students for next year.”
The savings the district is looking at if paraprofessionals are cut is around $414,000.00.
Board member Arthur Savoy however is against the idea of cutting teachers.
Savoy asked, “Are there any other places that we can cut, because although I want to make cuts, I do not want to see it happen to our teachers. Can cuts be made at the technology building?”
According to superintendent Toni Hamlin the answer is “no”.
Hamlin said, “We have four employees at the technology building, and when we move to all online testing there will even more work done for them to do there.”
The executive committee then had to decide if paraprofessionals were going to be cut, and how would the board determine who is let go.
It was decided that to determine which paraprofessionals were to be let go, evaluations would be looked at to make the decision.
To determine which paraprofessionals are let go their evaluations will be looked at, and if some evaluations are similar then the amount of years the paraprofessional has been working will then be considered.