001this time i'd like to call the tangible parish school board meeting to order for march 15 at this time with ashman to give roll call please mr richards present mr toller here miss abrams here mr westmoreland present mr duncan here mr bush here mr moore miss simmons here miss dominguez president this time i turned the uh meeting to miss abrams we had miss mckenna tate who was going to sing our national anthem today but her grandmother passed away she was going to represent laranja district but since we have a special guest here with us that's a very dear friend of mine we're going to let the louisiana strawberry queen 50 sing the national anthem miss avery myers [Applause] we'll do the pledge first avery this just so happens to also be my choir teacher from
002high school so she's going to be she's going to be accompanying me as well we'll do the pledge first i pledge allegiance to the flag to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all oh say can you see by the dawn's early light what so proudly we have had the twilight who's brought stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight or the red [Music] the [Music] that our flag was still there oh [Music] [Applause] of the praise [Applause] thank you avery i know i think that at the last minute but we appreciate it so much yes thank y'all moving on to consider approval of the board minutes of february 15 2022 do i hear a motion to accept i make a motion to accept a second
003miss dominguez second by miss simmons call for a vote voting is open yes hmm mr joseph looks comfortable in that chair right there i think he's been there before miss abrams yes okay voting is closed motion passes unanimously moving on to awards and recognition first recognize the recipients of the enis jake bailey jr above and beyond award miss simmons i'd like to call up miss jamie mills and colette talon now they're going to be part of honoring this individual and meet me down front the jake bailey above and beyond the war is awarded to individuals in our system of any any position that have gone above and beyond their regular calls of duty and we've had some outstanding nominees and tonight we have just such as that with captain suzanne miller would you please come
004up [Applause] [Music] certificate of recognition captain suzanne miller in recognition for being the recipient of the edius f jake bailey above and beyond award i heard some wonderful things about what you do every month for the trafficking roger greeting everyone and doing a great job thank you so much and we have some going to other wait wait wait all right this is your special letter from me um i'm a baby boy but uh also to a gift certificate thank you very much absolutely [Applause] [Music] we also have deputy stephen easley jr if he can come up here i don't think he's here [Applause] mr glenn johnson [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and we have one more who's not here detective earl mcfarlane [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay and we're just going to say a few things about our
005crew so on behalf of the laranja elementary faculty staff and parents we would like to say thank you the work that you all do amidst the different louisiana precipitations does not go unnoticed whether it's raining cold hot or just a really nice day you all show up each second matters and your ability to control the school traffic as well as the everyday traffic flow during our highest peak hours is amazing and you are definitely appreciated i'd be remiss if i didn't recognize our morning and evening carpool crew on campus who assists with keeping traffic going we unload about 10 to 15 cars in the morning at a time and then we load in the afternoon seven at a time all while keeping the other children waiting seated quietly and attentive to their names being called
006a huge thank you to my staff as well that helps in this everyday initiative i just have to say these people are pretty animated i'm going to see if miss colette can do a demonstration [Applause] now how how am i involved in this well first of all i have wild mouth i'm not afraid to pull over and say thank you but i'm a passer buyer that goes through the traffic and i have to say they have to be the poster children for getting traffic moving so i'm an elementary teacher so i wrote a little poem [Music] i mean come on here we go there's a little town not far from here where a lady they call peanut works with so much cheer suzanne miller you may know her is her real name along with her
007team of traffic guards have rose to fame they work the laronda school traffic with so much ease they have so much traffic expertise being respectful being compassionate being great is what i see when driving through the carpool line they are like celebrities celebrities you say i know they are just watch the waves and smiles that they give each car traffic moves continuously hear no time to waste there are skills to be taught in this wonderful place so thank you so much from the bottom of our heart because without you the carpool line would fall [Applause] thank apart um [Applause] all right next we're going to recognize the royalty for the 50th strawberry festival miss dominguez [Music] we love captive audiences and there's nothing like being put on the spot if you're the strawberry queen right
008and miss robertson where'd she go you are amazing we love you thank you so much pancho high school choral teacher she taught avery so we thank you all for filling in last minute y'all did an excellent job [Music] so i'm here today because i want to recognize the 50th royalty from punchville strawberry festival i have uh had the privilege of doing this for 16 years i will say 16 years this is my 16th year on the strawberry on the school board only year i didn't get to do it is because of covid and i've brought the royalty up here because i think it's important they've played such a great part of our parish and the economic development of our parish they represent the farmers that represent the non-profits in our local area and so y'all
009come on up while i talk about you so the strawberry festival of course was started in uh as a dream in 1971 and the first one was in 72 and 50 years later we're still going strong and it's only put on by volunteer people nobody gets a paycheck people like you people like teachers that are here that work hard every day these people are the royalty that represent the board and there's you know anywhere from 30 35 37 40 people put this whole thing on hundreds of thousands of people come to ponchatoula to honor the strawberries the honor the nonprofits and we could never um do the things we do in this parish without a lot of that tax money and a lot of the economic development for this the towns not just for ponchatoula
010but for all the hotels they fill up all the vendors it's an amazing thing so i love to recognize them every year to do this because it's so important for our parish all of the people behind me are punchline high graduates their chairman is not here tonight and i'm just going to say a little bit about him first because jeff wright is the chairman he couldn't make it he sent me a text a few minutes ago because of work he couldn't get here jeff is the longest serving board member for the festival he has dedicated so many hours to that festival and not to mention ponchatoula as the poncho chamber of commerce president jaycees he has done so much so he no more deserving person this year to be the 50th chairperson than jeff wright
011and i hate he couldn't be here to to get his recognition in his his due but we do thank jeff for all of the hours that he put in jeff was also chairman in 2007-8 when my daughter was strawberry queen and i served with jeff when i was the chairman myself in uh 2004. so for me it's it's a it's a i love the strawberry i love ponchatoula and um it's very passionate i'm very passionate about it so first i want to introduce uh well i was gonna introduce jeff but i told about him but the next one is the man behind me so this is our great king his name is carl wells carl's is one of the remaining founders of the strawberry festival he has been so instrumental in helping punch him in
012the community he loves southeastern he doesn't hardly miss anything at southeastern and he has done so much he even got the locomotive put in downtown poncho if you ever driven through ponchatoula he is the most deserving person that i know to be king this year for our 50th and i'm proud to say that he's my brother-in-law as well our next our next and our very newest royalty is our blossom miss willie may cummins the blossom is the first this is our first year she's very instrumental in helping her husband farming and also forming herself and doing all things and i'm going to let you tell let her tell you about herself a little bit and why we chose her for blossom but i will say in case she doesn't brag on it her king was
013also the her husband was also the king and her daughter was also the queen once so uh royalty runs deep for her our next person is uh our grand marshal miss margaret she is margaret brown mcneely joyner and uh she's a long time family uh really friend and member because her uh sister-in-law is my cousin i've known her for a long time she's done many many things for ponchatoula and her daughter was also a queen and last but not least and i want her to speak first avery myers and y'all heard her sing she's so talented she's an amazing uh she has an amazing voice we love to hear her sing she has done so much for the community as well as just being a great queen this year was so proud of her and
014i served my very first year on the strawberry festival award when her mother was queen so we have royalty blood in all of our lines and we love it and we we just wanted y'all to be aware of the festival if you haven't ever been they're going to tell you about it and i'll start with avery so thank you all for coming we love y'all well hi y'all i'm so excited to be here as the 50th louisiana strawberry queen it has just been a dream come true my mom like miss rose had said was queen in 98 and then my grandparents actually also helped start the very first strawberry festival so to be here as queen 50 is a huge honor a lot of people ask me what the strawberry queen does throughout the year
015we travel to a bunch of festivals and fairs to promote punch tula the farmers to shop local you know eat strawberries from our local areas like panchatullah even though there are farmers around springfield and independence everywhere around tangipahoa parish and so i basically am an ambassador for the festival and we are just so happy to have a festival this year i mean it hasn't happened in over two years so i'm gonna let mr carl go ahead and talk a little bit about the festival in the history [Applause] the one thing that's been very enjoyable we my wife and i along with avery we went to washington to the crew the mystic crew uh carnival and it was rewarding to be there with all those beautiful queens all over the state of louisiana but there's one
016thing that happened 50 years ago and i'm just going to let this float around and on here as dennis a bear a former representative the governor edwards my brother ron morgan and myself and the one thing that's that i like about this picture i can still show it the other ones are dead they're pushing me up who wants to follow that you know i don't have a picture and just let me say thank you so much for inviting us here tonight and you teachers um i am a retired teacher i taught 31 years in a neighboring parish and have been retired for 10 years so god bless you and i appreciate what you do i get to lead off the strawberry festival parade on saturday april 9th at 9 30 in the morning and if
017you want to come to our parade be there on time because it has a great history of starting on time we have a 50 entry fee and we begin at the lions club in at the kiwanis park in ponchatoula application application deadline is march 25th so if you're interested in entering a float in the parade you don't have much time to do that and you can look on our website for other information we also have something else before the festival on march 26 we have something called julian do fresh strawberry day in the park at memorial park which is the same place where the festival is held we have a bake-off a car show a wing cook-off a holy board tournament live music and we are auctioning strawberries so it's a great way to come
018out and spend a hopefully a very nice day in the park outside with your family and thank y'all especially you teachers like i said i so appreciate every one of you well last but not least i am the 50th strawberry blossom but the very first don't they know that we come first anyway my husband and i have done it for about 40 years somewhere around in there um i got to go back to saying he was a king in 2000 and they came and asked him to be king and he was like what what are you talking about but anyway he did then my daughter who's not a little person y'all she's 6'1 and i lit them and she came home and said i'm going to be the next queen and i said you are
019and she said i'm gonna run i said okay that's what you want and she did and she won she was the first strawberry farmer in 30 years she was the 30th strawberry queen so my husband was a king my daughter was a queen and i got my own title we just want to invite everybody out to the festival the farmers depend on y'all coming out and behind their strawberries the park will have everything you can think of strawberries in every way that they can think of putting them together all the farmers appreciate what the festival does for them 50 years ago when mr craw decided he wanted to help do this we appreciate it from the 50 years back it is a day that everybody comes out and it's friday saturday and sunday so you
020have three days pick which one you want to come there's rides there's everything you think of anything strawberry anything to eat we got it we invite everybody out that's what y'all all come so just to like put it in words again our festival is april 8th through the 10th so i hope to see all of y'all there i'm so excited we finally get a festival let's go [Applause] [Music] [Applause] to um yes thank you again for your patience and thank you again royalty of the 50th strawberry festival for coming give them another hand y'all [Applause] [Music] this time we'd like to recognize the 2021 2022 teachers of the year miss jackson [Applause] it is an honor and a privilege to recognize our teachers our great teachers for all the crucial work they're doing with our
021students at this time we would like to acknowledge them for the commitment and the student success that they're working hard they're demonstrating excellence in the classroom most importantly the sacrifice and their service to all the students of tangible parish school system we will recognize our elementary teachers then our middle school and our high schools from ameet elementary we have jordan slicker [Applause] from chess bro elementary virginia givings [Applause] from ddc reeves elementary sarah garcia [Applause] [Music] from independence leadership academy miss chastity joseph [Applause] from laronda elementary amy populus [Applause] from midway elementary amber meijo amy excuse me aim me maggio [Music] [Applause] from o.w dylan leadership academy davonia sibley [Applause] from parent early learning center mary holly adams [Applause] [Music] [Applause] from spring creek elementary miss tanya thompson [Applause] from tucker elementary miss lauren rose
022[Applause] from willam park magnet school amanda foy [Music] [Applause] [Music] and our district winner for our elementary schools is miss lindsay devaney [Applause] i won't leave you out miss rhonda i promise you okay let me announce that again from roseland montessori school our district winner is miss lindsay duvaney she's a third grade math and science teacher at roseland montessori school in rosen louisiana she has taught at roseman since 2019. lindsay is a proud alum of tangible parish schools dating back to her earliest years at midway elementary southeastern louisiana university's laboratory school to being a 2015 hammond high school graduate and a member of the first international baccalaureate graduating class she graduated with a bachelor's of science degree in elementary education from slu along with international baccalaureat certification with the desire to expand her horizons lindsay
023accepted a job at roseland where she has developed a love for the montessori philosophy and the international internationally montessori provides provides children in meeting their needs academically socially and developmentally she began montessori training and is currently working to complete her certification professional development is a strong passion of hers as she has acquired a certification as a math intervention content leader in her early years of teaching as well as being involved in a 2022 science content leah cohort in a whirlwind of the pandemic she participated in development of tangible parish's third grade science virtual curriculum developing the materials for the later modules in the curriculum her goal has always been to commit herself to being becoming a better more knowledgeable teacher so that she can give her best to her students as they are the ones
024that will go before her and change the world as we know it again miss lindsay devaney we thank you from rosa montessori school [Music] [Applause] thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] all right moving on to our middle schools representing a meet west side middle magnet miss vicki washington [Applause] [Music] champ cooper we have miss linda husky [Applause] greenville park leadership academy miss kim montgomery [Applause] hammond eastside magnet miss holly rocker [Applause] hammond west side montessori school catherine and xena [Applause] hammond west side montessori school miss connie sanders [Applause] independence magnet school tangela austin fleming [Music] [Applause] okay laranja middle school for tasha harry [Applause] the talbot middle school karen bankston [Music] [Applause] lucille neeson memorial cecilia foster [Applause] ponchatoula junior high school miss patricia braxton rancher [Applause] southeastern louisiana university lab school miss noel borderline [Applause]
025sumner middle school julie mcmichael [Applause] [Music] martha vineyard we have miss amanda williams [Applause] and representing our district for our middle school teacher of the year from hammond eastside magnet is miss latasha duplessis [Applause] miss duplessis currently serves as a fourth grade math and science teacher at hammond eastside elementary magnet international baccalaureate world class school in hammer louisiana she is taught at hammond eastside since january of 2013. she's an alum of tangible parish school system graduating from independence high school in 2006. she graduated from southeastern louisiana university in december of 2012 with a bachelor's of science degree in elementary education grades one through five with a level two teaching certificate for being an effective educator mr plessis currently serves as a great the grade level chap person for the fourth grade team she has attended
026several ib trainings in state and out of state for category one two and three training she also attended the ib world conference which was hosted in new orleans and during this time during the fifth grade grade uh exhibition project she had several community service projects with her groups of students including volunteering time at the house of serenity homeless shelter in ponchatoula and hosting a supply drive for military overseas miss duplessis won the james patterson scholastic book club award for her class library to promote reading for all students the teacher of the month for phd science level four for her amazing work in the classroom and her frequent participation in a facebook group to help others implement the new curriculum ms duplessis has a love for sharing the word of god and has helped to co-facilitate
027bible club a student-led organization with volunteer faculty supervision for two years at hammond eastside elementary magnus school congratulations congratulations mr latasha duplessis the district middle school teacher of the year [Applause] okay um oh [Applause] congratulations next we would like to recognize our teachers at our high schools from amit high magnets sabrina good [Applause] [Music] [Applause] from hammond high school ms sean sanders [Applause] [Music] from independence high school holly milazzo [Applause] [Music] yeah that's right i like that from kenwood high school gerald stilley [Music] [Applause] from laronda high school miss brandi alford [Applause] from sumner high school zachary kellum [Applause] and representing our district at the state level for the high schools representing ponchatoula high school miss stephanie robertson [Applause] all right miss stephanie robertson is a vocal music educator at ponchatoula high school where she
028serves as director of choirs teaches fine arts survey and music appreciation dual enrollment and as a co-sponsor of the ponchatoula high school drama club as a proud graduate of ponchatoula high school and the punch tool high school choral program mr robinson is committed to helping her students learn grow excel and appreciate music just as our core directors did for her under her direction the ph p constitutional high school choirs continues to have students represented in all state district honor choir and parish honor choir ensembles earn excellent and superior ratings and parish district and state choir assessments and perform around the community mr robinson is an active member of the national association for music educators american choral directors association the tangible association of music educators and the louisiana music educators association where she serves on the
029diversity equity and inclusion committee miss robertson earned her bachelor's of music education degree from southeastern louisiana university and her master of music degree from kent state university prior to teaching at ponchatoula high school she taught pre-k six general music at hammond east side magnet school in hannah louisiana and served as an itinerary general music choir and piano teacher for elementary and junior high schools in saint tammany parish we're glad to have you on behalf of terrible parents we like to thank you for representing our district at the state level as our district high school teacher of the year [Applause] and and let me just say that if stephanie robertson does not win secondary teacher of the year in louisiana there's something wrong that's all i just want to say [Applause] uh last but not least
030this is a new award that the state has provided for us this year is for the new teacher of the year this is a teacher who has served for one year or less brand new to the classroom but exhibited excellence in all things and representing our district this year is miss megan everett from ddc reads [Applause] okay miss megan avery is currently a first year teacher at d.c reeves elementary school in ponchatoula louisiana she teaches third grade ela and social studies she's an alum of tangible parish schools has a bachelor degree in early childhood education from southeastern louisiana university an associate's degree in veterinary nursing from baton rouge community college she is a part of the building committee the bug club committee and one is one of the teachers in our after-school enrichment program this
031is one of her quotes a failure is not always a mistake it may simply be the best one they can do under circumstances the real mistake is to stop trying by b.f skinner the experience of being able to teach in a community that i grew up in makes being an educator even more special having the opportunity to give back to the community that made me the person i am today makes everything we have been through this past year in our community worthy i come from a long line of educators an example i was shown growing up was to teach each student not just the class as a whole i believe in making sure each of my students leave my classroom with not only an understanding of the content but also on their way to becoming
032lifelong learners and productive citizens again our new teacher of the year for our district is miss megan averitt of ddc reeves elementary [Applause] [Music] and also receiving a new teacher award to represent our district from chester elementary school is mallory womack maggio [Applause] congratulations hmm [Applause] [Music] i just like to really quickly say thank you to all the people who came to support these teachers tonight whether you're a family member or a co-worker and if you're a principal i would like for you to wave at us thank you principals for coming out at this time we're going to take a five minute break so that y'all can get up and leave channel 17 proudly serving the florida parishes [Applause] teacher of the year is a tough act to follow get a speech so our fast
033forward initiative is the uh introduction of associate degrees to the high schools um you can go ahead and move forward yeah i guess i'm supposed to do that right okay there we go um so on louisiana believes if you go to graduation pathways there is a link now for fast forward and you can click on the second one there that is the fast forward pathways and we're divided into regions and our region is region two just give me a second okay okay and our pathways actually start on page 34 of that document so go on down to the bottom there and we are the third link is all of them and so each district according to their um baton rouge area chamber was our guiding force because the pathways that were passed were based on
034what that industry needed and wanted and so i mentioned that we needed um building technology specialists and that i wanted the jumpstart pathway at north shore as well as you can go down a little bit i think it's three pages down one more and there's also a tops university um associate of applied science that was the baton rouge community college so you go down another few pages and there is one at southeastern so southeastern was allowed to keep four associate degrees and so the building technology specialist is what we have there as well we're working on the other three they're at southeastern now getting approved by on dr temple and dr crane so we hope to add those later in the next round and then the other pathway that we got is in supply chain
035and logistics you can keep going down it's another thing there it is okay and it is the louisiana transfer degree in general business and it will have an emphasis in supply chain management um you can take me back to the powerpoint now and so in tangipahoa we will have three options for the freshmen that come in this year for associate degrees and what will happen is in addition to checking off their high school requirements you will also check off the requirements for the associate degree it is the intent of fast forward that these students will spend their junior and senior year immersed on a college campus we don't think it's going to look quite that way in tangipahoa and some of the surrounding areas because southeastern has such a robust dual enrollment program already so
036it's not necessarily that that child has to leave their campus although with scheduling conflicts it could be easier for the child to go do it there so as these pathways roll out we'll have to kind of play that part by ear and see how the scheduling works out at the high school and the college um so these are the key players and if you can get to the powerpoint from the board documents which i think she put it up there you can actually click on that industrial technology and see all the different pathways there we worked with dr seday jared reno and lawrence maurman there we also worked with dr negara with the supply chain management and we worked with dual enrollment and the louisiana transfer degrees if you click on that link that says
037louisiana transfer degrees aalt and aslt that's an associate of arts and an associate of science and they have already planned out that you take the associate degree and walk right over to the bachelor's degree in 17 different pathways so although the high schools have just started working on this the technical colleges and the universities have been working on sharing credits for the last 10 years and so this is our north shore partners uh with the building technology specialist we at first thought that was was only going to be offered at the sullivan campus and at the correctional institute but florida parishes in greensburg is also going to offer this for us so we will have this option there and i hear that there are plans eventually to um buy some land and expand the hammond
038campus and so when that happens hopefully they'll have the building technology specialist there all the other pathways that were approved some of those we will be able to approve in region 2 as well without having to go through the board of regents and dr roberts is working on those pathways you know to see if we can get a welding pathway an electrical pathway without having to go back to the board of regents but if it's brand new courses that hat does have to go through the board of regents so there will be more pathways to come and of course our partners over at the technical college are dr roberts dr wayne wright kim fitch and sandy yeager kim and sandy work well with us on all of our nursing programs anything that we don't offer
039on our campus our students can go to their campuses and take through dual enrollment and i think that's it y'all have any questions about fast forward i do mr carlin yes so for a student at kentwood high school because i love this course absolutely love it and i was just sitting there digging into the uh the curriculum and some of the different aspects of it on the building technology how does a student at kentwood high school participate in this program okay so what's already offered on our campus we want to offer on our campus so mr stilley already offers nccer core and nccer carpentry so a student would have to complete the core and the carpentry and then when let's say we don't have many students for level two that's when they could transfer over
040to north shore and work on the rest of the courses there and what we'll do is any elective credit if they're taking building technology whatever number over at the technical college that will count in their curriculum and we'll count it as an elective on our side and same thing with the englishes and the mass if he goes over there and he needs to stay over there all day and can't come back to the high school campus his junior and senior year then that person will be able to take their englishes and their mass over there and they will transfer to the high school so that was the work that we did uh stephanie markham is our contact at the state department that works only us and helps us and we at first weren't really sure
041what the advantage was to having a pathway go through fast forward but now we understand that all the courses that are in the fast forward pathway if a student goes and takes it at the technical college we get career development funds for them so that will help allow us to pay their tuition over there thank you another question amazing so uh do we do we transfer kids from the school to these programs yes we do when we can um the transportation department gets a little mad at me when i don't have enough students on the bus we'd like to have 10 students on a bus so as long as it's feasible we do transport them from wherever their campus is to either the hammond campus or the greensburg campus depending on you know where the
042school is located when i checked last week at the rogers say it it seemed as if they could get them to the um the uh north shore but they couldn't get them back to school in time to catch their bus correct and sometimes what will happen what we do in the hammond campus is we get them there but then the parents have to pick them up so we will have to do some creative things like that where um you know we'll we may be able to get them there in the middle of the day when the parents working but then someone may have to pick them up we already do that at the hammond campus we drop our cnas i think it is all for medical assistance one or the other and then the parents
043pick them up at the end of the day okay and i spoke with ms stilley about maybe ag one day could count as a science for those students that take ag is that possible i think it already does no ag one and ag two can count as a sign so if you take both it can count as a sign did we know that i don't know if something since we've had it for years okay thank you i still need to look there at my backup plan she's always there for me and she's been a great teacher in all of this any other questions have anything i just want to push these uh these classes are they more morning classes or i heard you say afternoon right we don't know at this point so this is
044just starting this will be the very first year and that's what i'm talking about when these freshmen become juniors and seniors if the scheduling works out they can stay on their campus longer but if it doesn't they may have to go to the university campus and be fully immersed in the university campus because i was just thinking as far as time frame is concerned that perhaps you could schedule the classes earlier in the day and that way you have the students back in time to catch your bus yes sir we we take scheduling into account but with so many different students and so many different options sometimes that doesn't work out nice and pretty like we want it to so all right that's it thank you miss cooper thank you thank you moving on to
045consider committee reports a capital outlay committee of the whole from march 8 2022 do i hear motion motion second time second bonus richards any discussion call for a vote is open voting is closed motion passes unanimously finance and audit committee march 8 2022 to hear motion i'll make the motion motion second by miss dominguez any discussion call for a vote voting is open voting is closed motion passes unanimously policy committee of the whole march 8 2022 to hear a motion i'll make a motion to accept motion to accept by mr ming a second by mr toler any discussion call for a vote voting is open voting is closed motion passes unanimously moving on to superintendent's reports and the recommendations recognize mr ian rice project director development next era energy resources ms stilley yes we have
046mr rice here and um as most of you may know amy high school received a grant a stem grant for 50 000 for a classroom and i think mr rice is going to update us the board on information regarding that yes thank you miss stilley i'm just here today to amplify this good news story the next air energy foundation we're thrilled to be able to award one of only 10 grants nationwide to update stem classrooms to the amy high magnet school is really a testament to the work of ms stilley's team and dr ford's team that the application was successful and we're very excited to see what they do building a classroom of the future in this robotics program that dr ford has envisioned and i'm excited to update the board that the funds have
047now been transferred from our charitable arm the next air energy foundation to the eye magnet school to help with uh transformational stem learning in this happy to classroom questions and also happy to keep things brief i know you all aren't here to see me speak thank you very much yes thank you thank you thank you thank you that's good news too very good news thank you mr rice any other updates you got another fifty thousand hundred around you get up until high school i throw that out there yeah i also wanted to share some uh sort of sad news we had miss henrietta vernon who was a longtime educator and also a principal at o.j b dylan passed away over the weekend i think she was just 45 years old and would like to remember
048her family during this time and the many people that worked with her i saw her mother today and her brother and got an opportunity to talk to them she loved the the children at o.w dillon she knew every child by name um she knew about about where they came from their background and um her heart and soul was at that school and so i just want to you know just acknowledge her many years of service there um at o.w dillon and of course she ended her career there as the principal uh of that school and as i was talking with her mother today i said you know there's there's many leaders that just want to be principal and and it doesn't matter where they go they'll be principal anywhere but for ms vernon she only
049wanted to be at o.w dillon that was her place that was where her heart was and so i just want to acknowledge her many years of service and then also mr reggie elsie whose principal woodland park lost his mother uh and then within a week he lost his brother and then his sister-in-law so three major losses for his family within a week and of course lorenda miss lorenda his wife is also one of our principals ms lorenda elsie at parent early learning center and ponchatoula so just want to just be remembering them during this really difficult time for their families thank you all right moving on to other board actions consider approval to dismiss the panchatullah area schools a half a day on april 8th due to the strawberry festival traffic ms dominguez well i
050really would like to bring this out because there are hundreds of thousands of people that come into ponchatoula buses traffic is crazy and i just don't i think it's great if we can go ahead and dismiss because they start the rides you know at lunch and we can get our children home safely without having to interrupt with the traffic and this would only affect the ponchatoula routes we've done it in the past because uh it's a safety concern i know i've you know spoke with the the chief of police and uh in the past and he would like for us to be able to do that so it would cause a little less havoc in town so i would like to make a motion yes that we um dismiss the ponchatoula school area schools half
051a day on the strawberry festival friday the eighth year second second by miss simmons any discussion call for a vote voting is open voting is closed motion passes unanimously thank you all right we have a personal privilege we're going to start with miss robin tonight well it was lovely having the strawberry festival royalty here congratulations to all of our teachers and um the state teachers that were awarded tonight um we know how much hard work it goes into putting on a festival mr dominguez as we just had our sicilian festival this past weekend so we're wishing the oyster festival this weekend the best of luck and again to the strawberry festival in april along with the italian festival it does bring a lot of economic development to our community people don't realize how much hard
052work it goes into doing these festivals and and how much it brings to the community but um once again just uh congratulations to all of our teachers because they did an amazing job this year we know how hard it's been considering the covet for the last three years but we know that they did an amazing job trying to hang in there and we appreciate it thank you mr duncan it i just wanted to talk i guess not so briefly about the work that the board has been doing and i know we'll continue to do to try and move our employees to having competitive salaries with our neighboring districts i do have thanks to the administration some some um some updated information about that that i'll share with the board and with the public um but
053before i do that i did just want to kind of go down memory lane a bit and talk about the long journey that we've been on uh just to get to the point that we're at now um you know this board first began having conversations about the need to have competitive salaries with our neighboring districts back in october of 2016 which is when we put we had our first meeting of the vision 2020 commission um over at hammond high school and at that point it was the consensus of all of the members of the division 2020 commission that if we wanted to be to make any improvement of our overall school system it had to start with um an investment in our employees and and that in order to do that we had to make
054a strong commitment to having salaries that were competitive with our neighboring districts over the course of the year that commission continued to meet and put together specific proposals that that the board adopted and then put before the voters of our community to hopefully try and fund those specific proposals of course that effort was not successful the community made clear to us over the course of of that election that there were some very important things that that they expected this board to do before they would approve any sort of revenue measure to fund that to fund those efforts the board then immediately took to the work of making those adjustments we brought in a new administrative team to help lead that effort we made substantial progress on the desegregation case to include getting substantially getting rid
055of all of the legal expenses that we were paying towards that effort and then got provisional unitary status after making all of those steps we then began work on a new proposal to fund competitive salaries that was done through the educational facilities improvement district who met put that specific proposal together and then the board agreed to put that before the voters part of that promise that we made to the voters was not just that we would work towards competitive salaries but we committed specifically to a seven percent increase in salaries immediately upon passage of that measure um thankfully that measure passed um the board um immediately committed uh did in fact agree to that seven percent increase which was put in place at the beginning of this school year in addition to the seven percent
056increase we also uh added some additional bumps to various positions to try and get those positions competitive and then later this most recently there was a one thousand dollar salary supplement um that was also approved um that was that went along or was in in addition to the salary increase that the state legislature passed that was also put in place this year um with that said the good news is there's a lot of good news there we you know the we initially thought that the one-half cent penny would collect around 11 or about 10 million dollars per year and that was what we used that was the figure that we used to budget um the seven percent increase um we are on track for that half penny to actually collect 13 million dollars this year
057so what the administration has begun doing is putting together a salary study for us so that we can evaluate exactly where we are for all positions within our school district and and where we where we currently stand as far as being competitive with our neighboring districts the the work that we've done up to this point has thankfully according to the preliminary results of that study we are now competitive and actually beat livingston parish at just about every step meaning at every step level when it comes to our teacher salaries our teachers salaries are competitive both as a starting salary for certified teachers as well as you know as they progress with as far as degrees and and up through the years our bus drivers are competitive with livingston parish they in fact make about forty
058five dollars a year um more than bus drivers uh in livingston parish um as their starting salary um there is still work to do for our bus drivers at various steps though according to the preliminary results of this study our peras however are still well behind our our neighboring districts they are 279 a year less than the livingston parish paris as their starting salary our school food service workers as far as a starting salary are 922 dollars per year less than school food service workers in livingston livingston parish our custodians are probably the worst yet and and if you go and look at how difficult it is to hire custodians right now for our schools this is reflected they earn three thousand dollars per year less than their counterparts in livingston parish i can provide
059you with numbers if we start to look at saint tammany parish we are even further behind when it comes to our support workers um just looking at starting salaries our custodians here make five thousand fifteen dollars less per year than the custodians in st tammany parish our school food service workers make less per year than the school food service workers in st tammany parish our bus drivers make seven thousand nine hundred and ninety six dollars less than what the bus drivers in saint tammany parish make so while we are competitive with livingston parish again we still have a long way to go if we ever hope to get to st tammany parish and our paraprofessionals make 619 dollars less per year than those in saint tammany parish the challenge is that although we do have
060um about three million dollars that we think we might we ought to be able to budget towards this um this continued effort just to get our support staff to those numbers that i i mentioned just to get our support staff not talking about any additional increases for our teachers but just if we were to try to target getting our custodians competitive our school food service workers our paras that will cost us 1 million per year which is a significant expenditure and that's again just to get to livingston parish the goal of this board has been that we want to be competitive with all of our neighboring districts so we need to have a significant conversation about the best strategic way to continue to work towards that goal i think we'll be ready to act on
061this as a board hopefully once we get the final results of the um of the the salary study of course to go through this process um you know it is a pretty elaborate requirement as far as what all has to happen according to state law we have to talk about budget amendments we have to do it has to go through finance we have to continue to do um the study you know making even a 1 million dollar expenditure is not something that should be done without ensuring that we're we're doing everything exactly the way that it's supposed to be done but again i think we ought to be proud as a community of of the work that's been done to get to this point and and and i know that we are all committed to
062continuing um the hard work of getting this done for our employees we've made this commitment the community has said that this is something that's important to them and now that we know how much this tax will collect on a year-to-year basis because again this is the first year that we've been collecting it we weren't sure how much it was going to collect but now that we have that data i know we all look forward to being able to take that next step thank you ms simmons thank you mr duncan for that report that was very informative um i just wanted to announce that thursday uh is the tarc radiothon and uh the bailey crew will open up at eight that morning raising money for tarc and some of you have already graciously given uh uh
063contributions for that hour and uh i have 12 schools that are going to have gene day that day and uh earning money and some of them already have brought the money in but uh so that's going to be at eight o'clock with johnny in the morning right 96 point 96.5 and uh also too i was privileged this morning to go to the governor's prayer breakfast in baton rouge and uh miss dilly got to go too and uh i guess what i want to say about that it was nothing political it was all about giving god the glory and praising god for his blessings and uh giving him honor and i i was just it just brought all parties together that day no politics just prayer for our our state of louisiana it was it was
064great mr bush thank you i'll mention this real quick that i'm going to comment on mr duncan's amy high football state champs punchline high school football runners-up amy high school girls state champs punch tool high school girls state champs and amy high school boys state runner-up so that's what we've got so far in our past through our athletics team which is pretty cool so i want to recognize all of that okay i'm just gonna be honest i set this office in 2020 and i talked about our transportation department and i put my efforts out there with the superintendent her staff the transportation department i shared my thoughts my feelings i came back last year tried to get additional money for the bus drivers and i'm gonna tell you tonight mr president i'm not stopping until
065this gets on the agenda before the salary study comes out that we look at our bus drivers and we recognize that they are a total different department than anybody else in our school system except our teachers our teachers go in the classroom they close the door they are responsible one-on-one for these students our bus drivers get in their classroom which is their bus and they close the door in a one-on-one responsible for their students it's not any comparison whatsoever i spent 25 years at schools i know about cafeteria workers i know about custodians i know about secretaries i know about everybody i've not had one person call me not one person called me from the secretarial staff the custodian staff the cafeteria staff or any other support worker in our schools except bus drivers and
066if we don't do something about this like i said last summer we're going to end ourselves in worse shape than we are in now and for the life of me i cannot understand why we can't work this out as a school board and do something they all need more money mr duncan and i have chatted very civil about cafeteria workers and all the and all the divisions i got it and i understand the seller's coming out and i understand we're going to try to do something in our transportation department over across the hall i understand that the kids are disrespectful but none of that's going to be solved overnight but i tell you what we can do we can solve some of this and help our drivers out and show them how appreciative we are
067by coming together as a school board and giving them some additional funds before this school year is over now mr president i've tried i've tried to i tried to do this with everybody personally i think i've probably spoke to everybody in this room superintendent included at the convention or thursday and i've been waiting and waiting and waiting and i do not want and please drivers do not leave us during that week of testing i'm begging you not to do that give me some time to work this thing out the best i can and let these babies go to school we need your help too i need you to help me here i'm fighting hard for you and i need you to fight with me but mr president you explain to me as our board president
068how we're going to get this on the agenda and when we're going to discuss it and when we can get it to the finance committee and can we do it in two weeks or can we do it next month at the next meeting and that's what i'm asking you right now how do i go about doing this [Music] [Applause] [Music] we have to see if we can put it on the finance uh committee for the next session and i'm going to tell you my proposal out loud and i'm not a finance guy like mr steinerbot but i do hear him talk i i think i think owner's operators should get a little more than drivers because they all have extra expense and i'm not saying a lot and listen by no means by no means
069is this is this going to help as much as you need and no matter what we do on our salary schedule for next year is not going to be as enough as the cafeteria workers our custodians are everybody needs i understand that so whatever you get please my friends just understand we're making some kind of effort to figure this out but i just personally don't want to wait till july i want to do it as soon as we can so let's let the finance committee work it out with our cfo and figure out what we can come up with and please whatever it is just bow your head say thank you god that you got something and not go out there and complain about it's not enough because i know already it's not going to
070be enough but we can't fix the disrespectful kids and i know ms aaron's not here tonight she said she couldn't make it but i got one myself on that bus that sometimes is disrespectful so i understand that and i know our department needs to be rearranged in some way and i know miss silly's working on that she promised every one of us that she's working on that transportation department to figure something out to make it more bus driver friendly for y'all and i got that too but we're going to need some patience and i know you've been patient for years i understand that but you heard me tonight you heard mr president glenn westmoreland say he's going to put it on the finance committee agenda and we're going to be presenting something hopefully in two
071weeks you'll hear something about it and thank you for being respectful tonight i appreciate it and also mr president instead of making these good people wait till we get out of executive session let them speak their mind before we go back there so they can get home so they get up in the morning and get on them buses because they're the first faces that our children see every day and i and i would appreciate if they could speak their mind before we go back in the back and keep them waiting another 45 minutes okay miss janice okay mr jerry yeah and i agree with that friendly everything you said i you know we've talked about it i know these bus drivers put up with a lot and i appreciate you i'm gonna tell you what
072i have total respect you know i've got one grandson that i'm dealing with at home and i know what it's like dealing with him and i know what it's like when he gets with his friends he gets around motions he would not act that way around me neither with his friends but once he's away from me he becomes part of the part of a partner that he's with and so i i have i have nothing but total respect for your uh propensity to deal with these children i mean to be a bus driver is one heck of a job and uh so [Applause] and i agree we should let them speak before we go into the executive session i had some other miss rose uh yes thank you all for coming we appreciate you we
073we do appreciate everything you do every day um as mr duncan said we are working on it we are working diligently on it we promised that we would give an increase to everyone once we figured out how much money we were receiving from the one half cent sales tax at this point we are above our predictions which is great but we have to go through the process but we do have a lot of employees not just bus drivers we have all these other people who are wishing we could give them money too so we're working on trying to give money an increase to all our people who are very underpaid so give us a little patience and uh we are working on it we've got the figures we've been going over them and we're doing
074the best that we can thank you so much for the the teachers of the year who were here tonight and please don't uh disrespect miss dominguez we're going to give you all an opportunity to speak we appreciate all the teachers of the year that came tonight they work diligently every day in the classroom and we're glad that we were able to honor them and um we just appreciate the patience that you've given us tonight as well thank you mr tom yeah just a couple of things i'll try to make it quick i do you know just reiterate we do appreciate our bus drivers it is a challenge on this side of the table trying to balance budgets you know i think about paris you know pairs right now make less than bus drivers they're in
075school eight hours so mr duncan is correct you know we're not opposed to any conversations with bus drivers or anything else about pay that is why we're spending the money to do the study that we're doing to try to make sure that we make the right decisions from the standpoint of the school system keeping in mind we can never do what we always want to do but we do what we have to do fiscally and be responsible but part of what the complaints from the bus drivers that's come up in this and it's one of my issues that i wanted to mention real quick tonight is discipline issues since the last meeting in my area we've had more and more instances of violence you know it we have a lot of students in our school
076system and the vast majority of the students go to school every day to learn but we do have students in our school system that do not value this education and because of that they're causing havoc and they're causing fear among our employees among our parents and among our students we as a board set these policies in place you know i was told that i should steer clear not from this dilly but i was told that i should steer clear of discipline type issues if not us who we set the policies we as a board and mr bush just mention it we do need to spend more time conversing and talking about issues not that we're trying to hide from the public because we can't break open meeting laws but we need to meet as a
077board more in committees and more without rush of time and without all the so we can discuss some of these issues are our policies working in discipline are the administrators adhering to our policies are these things being carried out are step six hearings are they being productive are we recirculating troubled kids back to the classroom that are causing more disruptions that are causing more of our kids to be afraid to go to school that's the hard conversations we've had that we have to have and have to have soon i've asked ms stilley for a meeting i want to sit down with her and the staff and go over some of these things i know she's been doing investigations on on these things but we have one day two or three weeks ago we had five
078fights at one school in one day that's not a reflection of our schools we've had fights in school since we've had schools that's a given we have to figure out are we doing what we can do to the best of our ability to stop this and to correct this we have a task we have an alternative school i know we can't solve home problems i know there's a lot of other social economic problems that come into our schools i get all that but i can tell you that kids respond when they're rewarded for good behavior and punished for bad behavior it's biblical it's just common sense and we have to have some hard discussions about that next tuesday night there's a meeting at sumner i think that's the 22nd at 7 pm it's not put
079on by me but i will be there it's put on by a bunch of parents that have gotten together and said we want to discuss this openly they i know they've invited the administration and i'm hoping that the administration whoever can come this is not going to be a gripe session because that was the first question i asked we know the problems we need solutions i don't want to walk into a cafeteria where we sit there for an hour and i get beat up about how bad the schools are that's not productive we need productive conversations with our parents so that they feel like they're being heard and that we can make some changes that also affects the bus drivers we need bus drivers to know that these kids are well behaved on their buses
080that's part of their complaints once again look the teachers of the years every last one of them i saw my my secretary ms michelle shannon lindsay that michelle and lindsey that was sitting in there i couldn't get to her during the thing but she's still there as a secretary at sumner i love her to death and her daughter sarah was one of the ones from d series but congratulations to all of them um please help us keep us in mind and administration i beg you let's have some honest discussions about discipline and see what we can do to solve that that's all i have thank you mr janice good evening uh first i'd like to say um congratulations to amy girls and then that the boys for second run-off and then ponchatoula and to the
081teachers um we really appreciate you and all that you do to my bus drivers uh i just want you to know that you do have our support we are here for you i have had but well in my area i have had my bus drivers to call me and we have talked about what the problems are and we are going to try our best to do what we can to accommodate you i just want you to know that you have the support of the board and i want you to know that we're listening to you and what you're saying i would like to say to please have a little patience because we do want to get our children to school safely and back home however we hear you and we know what your problem is
082and when it comes to discipline we know how that is because back in the day when i was going to school if you got in trouble on that bus and your parent had to take you to school there was going to be some problems for that child when you got home because they did not want to take you to school so i think that those are some of the hardcore things that we're going to have to look at and get back to to to figure out a way to solve our discipline problems now the money problem part of it i think that i'm i'm with tom is that okay we need to have some some conversations as this board and we need to see where the money is and what it is that we can
083do and and like randy said what can we do immediately [Music] so i just want to say that i just want you to know that you're not on an island by yourself and that you're not being you are being hurt we do feel your pain we really really do and thank you for all that you do [Applause] [Music] [Applause] okay mr duncan yeah i did i i skipped over this on my notes and somebody in the audience just reminded me but first i did want to say you know i don't see any reason why this should take till july to get figured out i also don't so i think it'll happen much sooner i also wanted to point out that the ex the three million more that we will be getting we will be getting
084three million more for this budget year and in subsequent years so whatever we can do there's no reason why we can't get it done uh to where something is allotted for both this school year and next school year but the other thing i wanted to tell you is we did hear from a number of you about the fuel issue and we've asked the administration and they are working on doing a fuel study to ensure that or at least to get us the numbers to figure out what it will take to make sure that the fuel that you spend doing the work that you do for this school system is properly reimbursed if if there is a problem with that um i can tell you everyone i've talked to on the board has agreed that we
085have to fix that problem so the administration is working on that they have a very in-depth study that they um are working on to to to get those numbers to us um and and again if if you are spending money out of your pocket on fuel um to do your job then that is not what this board is wants you to be doing and so where we can find that that is happening and why it's happening uh we're going to to address that um and again that is not something that will will take any months to get done we just have to figure out why it's happening where it's happening and how much it's going to cost to fix it and i'd like to echo miss janus because i didn't know that we were going
086to get on the subject when i was the first to talk there's not a bus driver that has called me that i have not relayed their messages to the superintendent and to our central office and every time we talk to the central office we're told the same thing we are working on this we promise we're going to get to the bottom of this and we're going to help these bus drivers they're not sitting on their hands i promise you guys we are working i a bunch of you are my friends i'm not going to throw y'all under the bus i want y'all to have the money you deserve because i know how hard you all work it it it might be said that you only work five hours a day but those five hours a
087day are probably the longest hours of your life having to deal with children that are disrespectful not all of them are disrespectful because we're not going to say that a lot of them are very respectful but to have to deal with what you deal with when you close your doors y'all deserve more than what you get and i agree with that 100 percent don't think that we're not backing you guys because we are we just have to make sure where we can get this money from before we make this decision because it's ultimately this board's decision not central office thank you mr westmore can i can i ask you one more question miss cindy when is our next official school board meeting the date do you have the date on that the meeting is april
08812th april 12th a full school board meeting yes we moved it up because the third tuesday will be spring break easter so we moved it up a week so we would have it if i had to stand up april 12th and introduce a motion to give you more money i'm gonna do it but i'm gonna do everything i can to get on the agenda for april 12th so april 12th you will know what it is and how much you're going to get asap april 12th you have my word on that i can promise you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] i would like to uh give the same sentiments that our board has and congratulate all of the winners of a meet in ponchatoula whether they were run up runner-up or state champions we definitely appreciate them and
089congratulate them as well as all the teachers that was here today we're very proud of them and we thank them for their service and i'd like to also tell the bus drivers here we 100 percent do thank you all for your service you know very important jobs to get our children to their schools and we will do what we can do to supplement to deal with the issues of discipline and the transportation department uh miss stilley do you have anything you'd like to add at this time and i'm gonna go ahead and go out of order and call up mr lamar stewart he's asked to speak tonight concerning school bus driver transportation and he'll have five minutes to speak good evening good evening um there are many cancer cells in the transportation department and no
090longer do we want chemotherapy we're coming to our board to help us find the cure we need air conditioners on our buses six out of the nine months that we drive to children in this parish is hot the disciplinary issues the school bus is an expansionary playground children know that if they act up on the bus they're only gonna be suspended off the bus for a few days but if they act up in the classroom i'll do everything in their power to help the teachers get them to test so why don't we have any support the object of the bus driver is to get the children to school safely disruptive children prevent us from getting the children to school safely disruptive children grow up to become disruptive adults set thirdly we haven't had a bus
091drive in two years we have drivers driving buses bus routes that they they have no desire to drive and we want to know why is it that we haven't had bus driver fourthly the routing of the routes are hard routes are maximized while lease drivers are on but soon as a contract driver come to the draft to get their route those rocks are basically doing the down from 38 miles to 30 miles to 25 miles to eventually there are no miles from the contract driver who bought their bus with the purpose of making money we want to know why does the field coordinator qualifications require you to have a degree but the qualifications to be the director of transportation does not require you to have a class b cdl license do you want the features
092to have something that the director doesn't have that's unfair extracurricular programs you want to know why is it they will only pay 30 dollars for extra rights if you hire a sub driver to come in and do that ride you're gonna pay them 100 per day so therefore why can't he or she that's driving why can't the drivers be compensated appropriately extracurricular activities such as summer school and after school this after school year district school year they asked people to drive in 30 dollars nobody would do it they had to send it back at 50 and that's when they got a response from the drivers who began driving uh for after school summer school programs last summer we used to pay 80 dollars a day but the the daily rate was 86 so how is
093it possible that for summer school you make less money than you make during a regular school year the wages a seven percent increase was totally unethical and unjust a seven percent increase for a person that makes a hundred thousand dollars a year is seven thousand dollars you provide that by twelve it's equivalent to a five hundred and eighty three dollar per month raise but a person that makes eighteen thousand dollars a year a seven percent increase is only one thousand two hundred and sixty dollars and you divide that by twelve that's equivalent to a hundred and five dollars a year a month i mean guess what they increased our insurance so therefore our raise went to our insurance transportation department is on lifestyle and the ventilation system that's keeping in the lives of these businesses
094who under promise but have overperformed when we became bus drivers we simply promised to deliver kids to school safely to perform pre-trip and post-trip inspections but we have over-performed because we're no longer just bus drivers we've become disciplinarians we have become generators we have become secretaries we have become counselors as we continue to support the children that we love we have been underpaid for far too long and now we're asking you to compensate us fairly and appropriately based off what we do i know y'all may say it's just driving a bus for five hours a day but as one of the board members said there's a lot that go into it those five hours a day you never know it may be your child or grandchild that i may have to be the one here
095simply because i see a need so therefore we actually view us as more than just bus drivers and also while i'm speaking our contract drivers from my understanding they're reimbursed based off unlimited gas prices and we can look at what's going on in the world today presently it costs significantly more to operate a diesel vehicle than it does a vehicle that requires unleaded fuel [Music] thank you sir thank you mr stewart this time we'll move on to a motion to enter executive session to consider the cases of joshua poche versus tpsb le karen mitchell versus tpsb in the matter of rhonda baratini do i have a motion motion by mr duncan do i hear a second second second mom miss simmons to that's time we're going to enter into executive session 17. proudly serving the
096florida parishes all right mr duncan you have a motion on the on the matter of um joshua poche versus ponchatoula high school no action on the matter of mitchell versus berkeley insurance attention repair school board no action on the matter of rhonda bratini we moved to adopt administration's recommendation you'll hear a second second motion made in second all in favor a couple people did randy and janice did none that oppose motion passes and that's all we have on the agenda tonight