School board discusses budget cuts during committee meeting

The Evangeline Parish School Board’s Executive Committee met on Tuesday to once again discuss where cuts will be made to climb out of the deficit the district is facing.
The potential cuts that were presented at the executive committee meeting involved cutting anywhere from 12 to 15 paraprofessionals (para).
At the meeting, Superintendent Toni Hamlin informed the committee that resource teachers are staffed for 27 students which allows them to have a para in the classroom, but these teachers never have all 27 students at one time.
The superintendent went on to further explain this situation by saying, “Some children may only go to resource for 10 minutes and then they are back in their regular classes.”
Hamlin also explained that under State guidelines resource teachers do not require a paras, but that the district tries to provide extra help to teachers by giving them a para, when there is money to pay for it.
Hamlin said, “We are over staffed in special education. When money is not a problem, we want to give schools extra help, but the money is not there, and a budget has to be adopted by September.”
Committee members however, would like to look into cutting other areas such as assistant principals.
Board Member Mike Fontenot asked, “Have y’all discussed cutting the three assistant principals that some schools have?”
Fontenot then went on to say, “We should see what we could save by putting some of these assistant principals back into the classroom. They could fill the openings we have from the non-certified teachers that couldn’t be hired back this year, and their salary would be what a teacher makes.”
The meeting ended with the committee deciding to table the discussion.
When the full board gathered for it’s regular meeting on Wednesday, cuts were not discussed. Hamlin did however inform the board that the executive committee will have another meeting to readdress making cuts in the district on June 29th at 4:00 p.m.
Items approved at the regular meeting were:
•Accept the low quote from Jeanmard, Inc. in the amount of $11,960.00 for a canopy to be used for parent pick-up/drop-off at Ville Platte Elementary School using parishwide maintenance funds.
•Accept the low quote from LUBA in the amount of $399,382.00 for workers’ compensation insurance using general funds.
•Accept the low quote from Travelers in the amount of $234,636.00 for property insurance using general funds.