Avoyelles School Board members improving elementary schools is key to improving school system

   When the state assessment test results were handed out, several Avoyelles School Board members pointed a finger at the middle schools as the main source of the problems. Others said an education system has to be built from the bottom up, saying more effort is needed in the elementary schools to prepare the parish’s students when they hit the middle grades.

    The public school district’s state performance grade slipped from a “C” to a “D.” Avoyelles High moved up from a “D” to a “C” and LaSAS improved from a “C” to a “B.” However, Marksville and Riverside elementary schools fell from a “D” to an “F.”

    Lafargue remained a “B” school, Plaucheville kept its “C” status and all others retained a rating of “D.”

   There was general agreement that most of the district’s discipline problems are in the 7th and 8th grades. Some of the worst grade-level scores on state tests are in the junior high classes. It is a tough time for students in many ways -- emotionally, physically and academically.

     Still, every school district has 7th and 8th graders with the same problems as Avoyelles.

   “Until we strengthen our elementary schools, our high schools and middle schools will continue to be back pedaling,” board member James Gauthier said.

    Board member Lizzie Ned said any school district’s primary building block is at the elementary school level.

   She said the district’s “No. 1 problem with its elementary schools is in putting highly-qualified teachers in the classrooms. We have day-to-day substitutes in the classes year after year. There’s not a lot of teaching going on when you have that.”

   Ned said the teachers in all of the schools have to get a handle on discipline and classroom management.

 

    “Until that happens, we get what we get,” she said. “When I compare Avoyelles to other school districts, I have to wonder, ‘What are they doing that we are not?’ I am very displeased with these scores.”

   Superintendent Blaine Dauzat said the board took a good first step last year when it approved a $5,000 sign-on bonus for new teachers this school year. He said the district will not see the results of that action until this school year’s performance tests are taken and the results are released next year.

    The bonus did result in many fewer vacant teaching positions when school started this year.

   Board member Freeman Ford said the School Board voted to close the middle schools several years ago -- a move he pointed out that he opposed. He said it is too late to blame middle school students for the high schools’ problems  “because the board made the decision to put them there.”

    It was pointed out that most of the current board members were not on the board when that decision was made.

   “The 7th and 8th grades have always been our problem area,” board member Van Kojis said, adding that he did vote to close the middle schools and combine them with the high schools.

 

    One of the parish’s high schools -- LaSAS, near Bunkie -- improved significantly, rising from a “C” rated school to a “B.” LaSAS is a charter school, approved by the Board of Elementary & Secondary Education but under the control of the local school board. It is the only charter school of that kind in the state. 

    Avoyelles Public Charter School in Mansura was approved by BESE but is not under the local School Board’s control. APCS consistently has high marks in school performance scores, but the school has not released the results for this year.

    After the meeting, Dauzat said that charter schools “have some advantages that the regular schools do not.”

    He then volunteered, “There are no parishes our size that have three charter schools, and only a few that have two.”

   Dauzat was referencing a third proposed charter school, Red River Charter Academy, which has asked BESE to allow it to operate a charter school for grades 6-8, to open for the 2016-17 school year.

    RRCA’s application has been deferred to January.

  RRCA Board President Pat Ours has said a main reason the school wants to start as a middle school is because of the need for  improvement at that level. 

  Dauzat said he believes the charter school would hurt the  Avoyelles School District “and I cannot believe that it would not have a detrimental effect on the desegregation of our schools.”

  He said the school “might help the 250 or so students who attend it, but it will hurt the other 5,500 who don’t. It will hurt more students than it helps.”