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Ouachita Parish board approves policy revisions, teacher stipends, capital allocations and several construction bids
Summary
The Ouachita Parish School Board approved multiple policy updates, a differentiated compensation stipend distribution, finance committee recommendations (uniforms, helmet reconditioning, travel reimbursement and signage), several bid awards and permission to bid on larger projects during the meeting.
The Ouachita Parish School Board approved policy changes, a one-time differentiated-compensation stipend allocation for teachers, multiple finance-committee recommendations affecting uniforms and equipment, and several construction and equipment bids at its November meeting.
The board approved a slate of policy revisions submitted by the policy revision committee, including new policies BCBJ and GAMK required by recent legislation and other updates. The committee recommended edits to FEA (architectural and engineering services) to require that contracts follow state guidelines and removal of obsolete wording about diskettes/CD-ROMs. It also added pre-K to policy IDBA to ensure coverage for all grades. The board voted to approve the listed policy changes as presented.
On compensation, staff proposed distributing the state’s differentiated-compensation allocation to teachers designated “highly effective,” using prior-year Compass scores to determine eligibility. The district’s plan sets the stipend at $5.78 per eligible teacher, to be paid Jan. 10, 2025, to employees active as of December 2024, with required withholdings applied. “So this year, what we decided to do was to try to reach as many teachers as possible … we chose to allocate the stipends to our highly effective teachers,” the staff member introducing the plan said. The board approved the distribution plan.
The finance committee recommended and the board approved several budget and policy changes: raising the band-uniform allotment from $400 to $500 and removing the per-student maximum, increasing the helmet-reconditioning allotment to $78.95 per helmet (the committee said reconditioning is required every two years), aligning mileage/per diem reimbursements with IRS mileage and GSA per diem rates, and establishing a district contribution cap of $2,500 for signage related to facility-name dedications (any excess would be covered by schools or community donors).
On procurement and construction, facilities staff recommended awarding several lowest-responsive bidders and seeking permission to bid others. Approved low bids included Singer H and R for a walk-in cooler/freezer at $71,142; San Tek for the Calhoun wastewater treatment project at $374,654 (budgeted at $475,000); Amethyst Construction for Woodlawn Elementary/Junior High wastewater at $530,000 (budgeted at $525,000); and Matt’s Music for sound systems at West Monroe High and Good Hope Middle at $53,338. The board also granted permission to bid a West Ouachita High School stadium renovation with a $9,000,000 budget and approved a surplus sale and the annual copy-paper bid.
Other business: the board approved the Louisiana compliance questionnaire for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2024, with staff reporting affirmative answers to the auditor’s questions; construction updates showed ongoing projects and a recently started press-box demolition; and the superintendent’s report highlighted district performance-score gains for several schools. The board noted its next meeting date as Jan. 12, 2025.
Votes and approvals were presented as motions with seconds and recorded as carried; where specific vote tallies were not read into the excerpted transcript, the record indicates motions passed with no opposition unless otherwise noted.
