LAFAYETTE — The Lafayette Parish School Board meeting lasted five hours Wednesday night. The board discussed two issues that could alter the lives of students, families, and retirees. One centered around retiree insurance premiums as the district heads towards a 7 million dollar deficit while the other focused on the recommendations from a consultant evaluation study.
At the start of the meeting, Lafayette Parish school board members received the evaluation from the Civic Solutions Group, a Louisiana-based consultant firm who constructed the findings. CGS was hired back in May, and have been working to gather data for the district to meet their goal of adequately spending tax dollars that will benefit student's needs.
The Initial district optimization recommendation for consideration was released to the public on Wednesday night in 34 pages. It included recommendations regarding seven facilities taken offline, three re-purposed facilities, two new facilities on site, four reconfigurations, and 16 schools receiving additional students and more.
One of the seven closures includes Acadian Middle School, which has the second lowest rate of zoned students attending the school in the District.
The recommendation suggested rezoning Acadiana Middle School students to Carencro Middle School.
Olin Parker with Civic Solutions Group says the priority of the findings is to maximize the number of students in higher-performing campuses and higher-quality facilities.
"So, if the recommendations that we made tonight are all adopted, that would represent roughly 3600 students in higher-performing campuses and over 3000 students in higher-quality facilities," said Parker.
Katie Derise, a parent, was thrilled after the meeting after learning that her child's school was not listed under the closures.
"I was worried about the immersion programs. Both my children go to French immersion, and we want to see it continue in particular Myrtle place. I wanted to make sure that Myrtle Place continues to be an immersion school," said Derise.
When it comes to closing schools and rezoning students, Acadian Middle school joins Duson ES, Northside High, S.J Montgomery, Paul Breaux Middle , Northside High, and a few others; however, there is confusion about when it comes down to actually closing schools.
"What we presented tonight was seven facilities taken offline; that does not represent seven school closures because some of our recommendations involved, for instance, moving a school from a lower quality facility to a vacant and higher quality facility or taking older facilities offline and constructing new facilities that are more efficient and we believe may save money over long-term," said Olin Parker with Civic Solutions Group.
Regarding insurance for Medicare-eligible retirees and dependents, the board passed a motion to approve a 10% premium increase on active employees and a 50% premium increase on retirees based on Gallagher's, a risk management group, calculations.
You can click here to read more about the Civic Solutions Group district optimization presentation and findings.
The LPSS plans to meet on November 20th to discuss the recommendation and receive community input.
