Lafayette Parish School Board backs facilities approach, approves annual report and keeps EJ Sam at career center for 2025–26

Lafayette — The Lafayette Parish School Board on April 10 defended its recent approach to facilities work and approved the district's annual comprehensive financial report for fiscal year 2023–24, while also accepting staff's recommendation to keep Edward J. Sam Accelerated School of Lafayette at the W.D. Smith Career Center for the 2025'26 school year.

Board members spent much of the meeting responding to recent media stories and audit questions about how the district has packaged and awarded facilities projects. "The good old boy network is gone, and the cash cow is gone," the board president said during a lengthy defense of the facilities division's recent work, adding that the district has completed more projects in the last year than in previous years and that changes produced sizable savings.

Why it matters: the board and staff argued that revised procurement and project-bundling methods have delivered faster, cheaper work on school buildings and grounds; critics, including a local auditor and unnamed former employees cited in news coverage, raised questions about whether some procurement steps were consistent with public-bid practices. The board voted to approve the items that were on the consent agenda and later accepted the annual financial report after a separate discussion on the document.

What the board approved and discussed - Consent agenda: The board approved the…