Baja St. Martin

It’s back to work at Stephensville Elementary School. Like all other Louisiana schools, teachers are beginning to think of iLEAP and LEAP — with some dread, I imagine, because it involves so much preparation and time. The tricky part, as I understand it, is to better the scores, which means a school which achieved very high scores must get even higher the next time or be considered in need of school improvement.

I read an article recently in Time Magazine, I believe, about some schools (not around here) which had given their students the real test problems for practice so their school performed really super. The cheating was discovered, of course, and the next year authorities administered the tests honestly and the scores dropped precipitously. (How could they not?) The gist of the article was to point out that teachers (in these cases) and administrators were condoning cheating and were not being very good examples of correct behavior.

Barbara Vicknair at the Lower St. Martin Water and Sewer Board office in Stephensville said the new sewer guy is Chris Sauce and he seems to be doing a great job. The lift station by my house has been working just fine but Barbara said there is a broken discharge line on Aucoin Dr. just up the road from me that is causing the same type of problems as mine (you’d think I owned it) once did. Apparently, the original sewer grant funding covered only PVC sewer piping which has not held up.

Bayou Telephone Company continues to operate in Four-Mile Bayou for the time being. One of the residents there told me that Mr. Marshall has always been great about coming when there was any problem, even if it was in the middle of the night. They haven’t heard anything more from the Public Service Commission about meetings. Neither have I.

This is some weather. As I write, it’s almost 70 degrees. A week before it was 25. Now I have to look at all the dead plants around my house. I was out of town on the nights the temperature dropped so low so I was unable to gather the last of the green tomatoes on my plants and lost a few ornamentals that I might have otherwise saved, but all things considered it isn’t too bad. I’m always mindful of Louis Miller’s advice on NPR not to cut off freeze damage too quickly because you can’t really tell just how much to remove. I know for sure my Angels’ Trumpets are kaput, but not so certain about the Bougainvillea and Hibiscus and some others.

I have cleaned out and repainted my two purple martin houses because I figure the birds will be returning before long. Oddly, I haven’t seen any more of the cormorants in the river. Maybe two weeks ago there were quite a few on the water but they haven’t been back since. I don’t see the pretty, silvery flashes of little shad in the river so maybe that’s why the birds aren’t here.

Belle River bridge repair work continues. Every now and then the bridge is closed to traffic for awhile but it hasn’t been too onerous. I keep a magazine or book in the car and some munchies so the waiting isn’t unbearable. It’s always amusing to see guys get out of their trucks while waiting in line to check their oil and water, kick the tires, pet the dog in the back end, get together in clusters with friends in other vehicles. Sure a lot nicer than ranting and raving.

Linda Cooke

The Teche News’ Lower St. Martin correspondent, Linda Cooke, can be contacted via e-mail at mamasan39@peoplepc.com.