The top three applicants hoping to become the next top public schools administrator in Lafayette Parish will be at the LITE Center Dec. 13 for a public forum to be held the day before the Lafayette Parish School Board makes its final selection at a special board meeting Dec. 14.
The three candidates vying to replace retiring Superintendent Burnell Lemoine are Dr. Pat Cooper, CEO of an early education center in New Orleans; Walter Gonsoulin, a New Iberia native and current assistant superintendent in Starkville, Miss., and Katie Landry, a longtime Lafayette Parish school system administrator and current deputy superintendent in Lafayette Parish.
Beginning at 6 p.m. Dec. 13, the three finalists will make power point presentations for the stakeholders in attendance then participate in a Q&A session to be moderated by professors from UL Lafayette. Questions for the candidates must be submitted online through the LPSS website prior to the forum.
At Wednesday’s regular board meeting, The Advertiser reports that board members offered brief thoughts on their visits to the three candidates’ current school districts, describing all three finalists as “strong candidates:”
Gonsoulin worked to involve the business community in the school system, said Rae Trahan, a Lafayette School Board member who made the Starkville trip with [Board President Mark] Babineaux and Shelton Cobb. Babineaux said Gonsoulin is acting as superintendent of Starkville School District and had also applied for the open superintendent job there.
“They were really upset that we were seeking him out because they were hoping to keep him for their own,” Trahan said.
Board members also visited McComb, Miss., where finalist Pat Cooper was superintendent from 1997 to 2007. While there, he implemented several programs such as an alternative school nurse program, a program for pregnant students and an early childhood program from birth to 5 years old.
Babineaux said all of Cooper’s programs, except for the alternative school, are still operational.
Lafayette board members also visited New Orleans, where Cooper heads a foundation that created the Mahalia Jackson Early Childhood and Family Learning Center. It is located in the Central City section of New Orleans and houses early childhood programs, birth to first grade; a library branch, health clinic; and social service agencies.
Community members there described Cooper as a visionary, problem-solver and strategist, Babineaux said.
Landry, deputy superintendent of instructional services, has implemented several student programs, such as the Second Chance program that helps elementary students recommended for expulsion stay in school and another that helps overage middle school students catch up academically with their peers, Babineaux said.
Read more from The Advertiser here.
Read more from The Independent on the months-long superintendent search and its impact on the Lafayette Parish School Board here and here.
MAY 24 Blogger Robert Mann posts this entry about the Baton Rouge Chamber's recent report on Louisiana's higher education system. It's critical to economic development, and yet our system is facing a "funding crisis" with no way to resolve it, the report says. The Chamber says control of tuition and fees must be returned to the higher ed governing boards.
MAY 24 Here's a NBC33 story about Tyrann Mathieu. He has signed with the Arizona Cardinals, inking a $3 million, four-year deal. He gets a signing bonus of $265K, but gets another, larger bonus if he doesn't get cut from the team for doing drugs. The deal reportedly includes mandatory tests and meetings for the player.
MAY 24 Jarvis DeBerry posts here about the redonkulus rhetoric that would have us believe NOLA is a safe city with a murder problem. Maybe the city's crime stats don't compare with its murder stats because you can't manipulate a murder, he says: a dead body's a dead body. It just doesn't make sense, he says, and his readers agree: a poll asks if they believe the city is safe, and more than 90 percent say no.
MAY 24 Jindal administration officials announced Thursday that the privatization of public health care is going to cost a lot more than they budgeted for, the Advocate reports here. "I'm so surprised," said no one. Anywhere. The cost they're projecting now is more than $1 billion - a lot more than the $626 million budgeted for it. And, it's more than it cost the state to operate those hospitals. So why are we doing this again?
MAY 24 Blogger CB Forgotston ridicules the recent PR campaign by the state GOP in the wake of a legislative auditor's request to both major parties. The GOP (apparently unaware that the Dems got the same request) started yammering about being targeted because it had "killed" a tax increase. CB finds that laughable, but it's also pretty funny that the GOP was comparing this episode to the IRS scandal (Because the President has so much to do with our state auditor. Right?).
MAY 24 Politico details some recent fund-raising efforts by Sen. David Vitter, which have raised the question of his future political plans. This time, it is a $5,000 per head "bayou weekend" that includes "Cajun cooking" and an all-caps "alligator hunt," the story reports. Funds raised go to a super PAC that can spend money to support Vitter in federal or state races, the story points out.
MAY 24 The pink building on Royal in the quarter was sold at a sheriff's sale Thursday, this Picayune story reports. An injunction that would have halted the sale wasn't enforced because the family failed to post a $150,000 bond, the story reports. So the owner of the mortgages on the building bought it, for nearly $7 million. Now the feuding family will have to negotiate with that company to get a lease on the building that has housed their business for close to 60 years.
MAY 23 This post in Louisiana Voice tells us about a bill by a Winnsboro lege that would require all public high school students to take at least one Course Choice online class in order to graduate. (What?) Blogger Tom Aswell says it's a monument to "waste and corruption," especially in light of the problems he's exposed with the program in recent weeks. Idaho had a similar program, but voters removed it by a 2-1 margin, Aswell says.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed