1.- Communicate with my constituents and keep them up to date on the issues being discussed by the School Board.
2.- Stay in contact with other school system throughout the country to make sure we are providing the best education possible.
3.- Making sure the school system has the finances necessary to provide the best possible education for our students.
I have attended 8 school board meetings over last two years.
The MFP is the way the state of Louisiana guarantees the public schools will get enough money per student to educate its youth. No one seems to understand the formula used to determine the amount of money the MFP will send to each district for the number of students in that district. The amount of money provided per student has varied little over the last several years. The good thing about the MFP is that it has remained off limits to legislators wanting to use this money for other purposes.
1.-One of the most frustrating unfunded mandates that I dealt with as a principal was the requirement to give student standardized test on line without any financial support from the state to help provide students with up to date computers for this testing. This is very expensive and luckily our district has the funds to keep up with the technology necessary to accomplish this mandate.
2.-The state just started a new unfunded mandate this year which requires high schools to provide remediation to students who did not score an eighteen on the ACT. This remediation requires more time to be taken out of the teachers’ day to provide this remediation for no extra pay. Some schools could have over 100 students who would need this service which would require another full time teacher to provide the service with no funding available.
As a high school principal, I experienced the moving of students from one high school to another by the supervisor in charge of this task. Usually, this was the best option for the student who came to our school and did well or went to another school and did well. Over my 15 years as principal I would estimate that the number of students who left us in this manor was equally replaced with someone from another school.
Yes, in my opinion there is no price I wouldn’t pay to keep our campuses safe.
Generally, I would reject these proposals. However, if a company is going to bring industry that will bring help to the community and employment opportunities there may be some flexibility for an exemption.