LearnPad distribution discrimination debated

CENTERVILLE — The facts are simple: There were 722 LearnPads planned for St. Mary classrooms in the coming school year prior to Thursday’s meeting of the parish school board. Of those, 592 were planned for the east end of the parish and 130 for the west end.
How the disparity came to exist is a little more complicated and caused at least two St. Mary Parish School Board members to hint at discrimination.
Of the 722, there were 208 purchased with District 2 (Berwick-Bayou Vista) maintenance funds, according to Kevin Derise, chief technology officer for St. Mary’s public schools.
“District 1, which has some of the most at-risk students, probably needs (LearnPads) the most. If you’re in a poor district, you’re not going to find the money,” said Wayne Deslatte of Centerville, who has championed the push for LearnPads to be distributed to every elementary classroom in the parish at the same time.
“As a board, we are responsible for setting policy and providing fairly for the entire parish. Funding academics by districts leads to discrimination,” Deslatte said in his written notes, provided after the meeting.
The remaining tablet-like devices were purchased through local and state grants, Title I funds and fundraisers, Superintendent Donald Aguillard told the board.
“In everything we’ve done in deployment of initiatives, we’ve treated all children fairly,” Aguillard said, later adding “We can’t fix or change what has been done independently of the board.”
Mary Lockley, who represents a portion of the unincorporated extreme western end of the parish that includes Raintree Elementary in Baldwin, told the board she hoped it was not a discrimination issue.
Marilyn LaSalle, representing the Patterson area, said in response “There are different ways to look at what is equitable, and you just have to add reason to that.” She indicated that Patterson hadn’t had a new school built in more than 30 years, but District 1 got two within a decade of each other, the last in 2008.
Lockley replied to LaSalle: “When Hattie Watts needed repairs, I was delighted to vote for it because it was for the children. It wasn’t about the district. It was about the children.”
Of the 130 LearnPads on the western end, 65 are in junior high schools, the only area of the parish to have them at that grade level, and were purchased with state grants, according to Derise.
The devices are used primarily in elementary classrooms, putting a computer in each child’s hands. Teachers control what students can see and do on the device.
Deslatte said when the parish was divided into three maintenance districts more than 30 years ago, it was never intended to split how the board funds learning materials, but that’s what it has evolved into. Assessments have changed while millages have remained virtually unchanged, resulting in an uneven distribution of funds and learning materials, he said.
He commended the administration for finding $450,000 that long ago was designated for use in removing asbestos from school system property. That has since occurred, Aguillard said, and there has been no need to do further work for years.
Aguillard said he surveyed the anticipated numbers of third, fourth and fifth grade students for the coming school year and learned the largest section is 35 classes of third graders, so he requested funding for that grade level.
Funds do not need to be budgeted for M.D. Shannon Elementary in Morgan City as the school is projected to be at a 1:1 ratio of LearnPads to students for the coming year, he said.
Therefore, purchases of additional LearnPads for 34 classrooms plus two contingency classrooms, at a cost of $12,500 each, will cause $450,000 of the $500,000 originally budgeted for asbestos abatement to be reallocated. The purchase was approved unanimously.
Meanwhile, Deslatte asked Aguillard and Chief Financial Officer Alton Perry to search the budget for a funding source to supply every elementary school in the parish with LearnPads before the 2014-15 budget is finalized, at an estimated cost of $1.2 million. He requested the item be placed on the August agenda.