St. Tammany News

After listening to St. Tammany Parish Public School System Superintendent Gayle Sloan Friday morning, the East St. Tammany Chamber of Commerce urged members to go out and vote for the bond reauthorization that will be on the ballot March 8.

"Good education is one of the prime reasons families relocate to St. Tammany Parish," Chairman of the Chamber Board Alan Hodges told Chamber members at their monthly Fourth Friday Breakfast. The bond reauthorization is a $167 million package that will be funded by existing millages without raising taxes.

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, Sloan told Chamber members the school system needs to build and renovate schools damaged in the storm. The capital projects part of the bond will cost $150 million.

The centerpiece of the capital projects will be the construction of the New Advanced Studies High School in the Learning Park Facility just north of Lacombe. The new high school will be across the street from the campuses of Southeastern Louisiana University, Delgado College, the University of New Orleans and the new St. Tammany Vocational-Technical school. Students at the Advance Studies High School will attend regular classes, then go to Advance Studies to learn performing arts and technical skills. The students will also be able to attend the local college campuses to earn college credits.

"They could earn a year's worth of college credits at this high school," Sloan said.

The new school would cost $25.4 million. Other projects would be a new elementary school in Madisonville for a cost of $24.7 million. The rest of the capital projects funds would go to rebuilding and renovating 16 older schools all over the parish.

Sloan said $10 million of the bond money would go to improving the technical infrastructure of the school system. The School Board wants to increase the ability of students to attend distance learning classes via the Internet. Sloan said part of the money will go to making all the schools wireless, and she wants to set up a computerized archival storage for student records that can be accessed by both teachers and administrators.

"We need better access to this data in order to become better educators," Sloan said.

There will be a $2 million expenditure to improve security in the system's schools. The money will go to buying sophisticated security cameras. Deputy Superintendent Trey Folse said the security plan calls for installing 25 cameras in each high school, 10 cameras in each junior high school and five cameras in each of the parish's public elementary schools.

The cameras would be tied together in one network, and School Board administrators could monitor the cameras from one location.

Currently, a pilot program for the cameras is being used at one of the high schools.

"I can view all 25 cameras from my desktop computer in Covington," Folse said.

Sloan said the bond issue is "critical" for the school system's future. She said the success of the St. Tammany Public School System can be summed up by big community involvement. Of the 58,000 PTA members in the state, 24,000 of those members are in St. Tammany Parish, Sloane said.

"The success of our schools is tightly joined with quality of life in the parish, and we must keep education levels high," Sloan said.