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 21 Gambit columnist Clancy DuBos writes about the Mother's Day shooting, and how the stages of shock and blame and healing mirror those traveled by the same city following Hurricane Katrina. The city will recover, just as it did following the storm, by reaching out to help the people injured most seriously by the event, DuBos writes. It's how we heal, he says.
MAY 21 Here's a post on the Advocate (but buried on a subpage, not on the front) that reports something Louisiana Voice reported some time ago: a top DOE official lives in Los Angeles and "commutes" to Baton Rouge. The positioning of the story caused a stir on Facebook Monday, with several posters asking if the Advocate was covering someone's hiney. Sentell's stories on DOE are notoriously soft, and this one is no different: don't expect any hard questions in here.
MAY 21 Here's another post from blogger Tom Aswell about the "course choice" program. He's already reported on kids being signed up without their consent or knowledge, and has more here: For example, he tells of a six-year-old who was signed up for high school Latin. He also digs a little deeper into the sister companies of the main one operating in Louisiana; all of them seem to have complaints against them. Stinky.
MAY 21 Given the 80 percent cut in higher ed funding since he's been in office, it's clear Gov. Jindal would rather give tax cuts to out of state companies than have a functioning system, blogger Dayne Sherman argues in this post. The cuts have been such a disaster, Sherman says, that it will take 30 years to fix what's been broken. He says he believes the aim is to shut down most of the schools before Jindal leaves in 2016.
MAY 21 Blogger CB Forgotston says there are too many elections in Louisiana, and they're costing us too much money. The proof is in the pudding: turnout for most of these nonsensical pollings gets worse and worse, CB opines, even as millions of dollars that could be spent on health care or higher ed go down the tubes. The legislature must take action to stem the tide of pointless elections, he says.
MAY 21 Here's an interesting investigative piece by WVUE on the retirement benefits of some Jefferson Parish public employees. According to the story, the taxpayers are paying 100 percent of the retirement contributions of employees who started work prior to a certain date in April 1986 -- and have done for more than 30 years. It costs the parish millions annually, and might not be legal, the story reports.
MAY 21 This post on Bayou Buzz provides insight from Louisiana's intrepid pollster, Bernie Pinsonat, on the winners and losers from this year's legislative session. But to hear Bernie tell it, there's almost nuttin but losers: Jindal, the Republican party, the Fiscal Hawks all get big goose eggs in his win column.
MAY 20 This post on The Lens takes a look at a huge (either $500K or $250K) bill that one NOLA charter now has for school lunches. The RSD says the charter group didn't fill out the proper paperwork for federal reimbursement, but the story details how the RSD didn't ensure the people running the charter had the proper training, despite requests from hapless charter employees trying to fill out forms. Either way, somebody's asleep at the wheel.
Most Read
in case you missed it
Subscribe to this comment's feed