Leonard Armato will be new St. Mary superintendent

CENTERVILLE — After 29 years as an educator and administrator in St. Mary Parish, Leonard Armato was named the new St. Mary Parish schools superintendent Monday.
The School Board voted 7-4 to make Armato, formerly the school system’s special education supervisor, the new superintendent over James Gray, Vermilion Parish’s director of school leadership, who had 20 years of experience as an educator and administrator.
After May 30 interviews with five candidates, Gray was the top vote-getter with nine votes, while Armato was second with seven votes. The five candidates interviewed also included Peter Boudreaux, the district’s director of secondary instruction; Aubrey “Bubba” Orgeron Jr., director of secondary education in Lafourche Parish; and Ricky Armelin, the St. Mary school district’s human resources director.
On Monday, School Board members Mary Lockley, Kenny Alfred, Mike Taylor, Ginger Griffin, Bill McCarty, Anthony Streva and Roland Verret voted for Armato, while Joe Foulcard, Pearl Rack, Marilyn LaSalle and Wayne Deslatte voted for Gray, Griffin said.
Armato, 51, and a Patterson native, said he felt excited and humbled to be given the opportunity to lead the school district after 29 years with the district.
Armato served for 10 years as a special education teacher at Patterson High School, and also was an assistant principal there for four and a half years. He was principal at Hattie Watts Elementary for 3-1/2 years. He had been special education supervisor for the past 12 years.
Armato has dealt with “every level” of the school system all the way from teacher to supervisor, he said.
Griffin, School Board President, said the selection process was difficult but an important decision for the board to make. Both Armato and Gray were “viable candidates,” Griffin said.
Griffin looks forward to working with Armato and continuing the path that the school district is following, she said.
Griffin hopes to be able to negotiate a contract with Armato and get board approval for that contract at Thursday’s regular school board meeting, she said.
As his first action, Armato plans to meet with the different department heads and evaluate the school system to make sure the “right people” are in the “right places,” he said.
Armato also needs to meet with the school system Chief Financial Officer Alton Perry to finalize the budget within the next couple weeks, he said.
Perry will probably ask to set a date for a budget workshop at Thursday’s board meeting.
“No. 1 priority is school achievement. We will always do what’s best for our kids in St. Mary Parish,” Armato said. “I’m an advocate for kids. I’m an advocate for teachers, and I feel like we have the best administrative staff.”
Though the school system has made lots of progress in the last 10 years on school achievement, the system still has a ways to go, Armato said.
He wants to find areas the schools can improve on immediately and will begin attacking the problems identified within the next couple weeks after he evaluates the system, he said.
The biggest challenge Armato will face is getting people comfortable with Common Core and Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for Colleges and Careers, or PARCC, testing, he said.
The school system may have some issues with minimum foundation program funding, not knowing yet the amount of funds St. Mary Parish schools will receive, and will have to make some quick decisions regarding the budget once those MFP numbers become available, Armato said.
Once the state Legislature approves those funds, the School Board will know how much MFP funding it will receive, which could have “a huge effect on the budget,” Perry said.
Teresa Bagwell had been serving as interim superintendent since May 18 when former Superintendent Donald Aguillard left to become the Lafayette Parish Schools superintendent. Aguillard had been St. Mary Parish superintendent since 2004, and, on April 23, the Lafayette Parish School Board voted to hire him as its new superintendent.
The remaining five applicants for the St. Mary superintendent job were Donna Alleman, director of Louisiana Schools for the Deaf and Visually Impaired; Joey Comeaux, director of child welfare and attendance for data and tech, transportation and secondary schools in Assumption Parish; Molly Stadalis, principal of Franklin Junior High School; Rhonda Stringham, executive director and assistant superintendent of Limestone County Schools in Athens, Alabama; and Clyde Washington, deputy assistant superintendent of administration for Rapides Parish.

This story was written by Zachary Fitzgerald of The Daily Review staff.