Board will learn about students at Fletcher

The St. Mary Parish School Board will hold its monthly meeting Thursday at 5 p.m. at the Central Office Complex. It was pushed back a week because the regularly scheduled meeting was during the week of spring break.

Fletcher Technical Community College’s Nichol Blanchard, college and career transition coordinator, is listed as one of the speakers on the meeting agenda.

She plans to inform board members about the program activities St. Mary Parish students have been involved in over the school year.

Blanchard serves on South Central Industrial Association’s workforce development committee, which developed the Work It Louisiana career awareness program geared toward high school students.

“We really focus on the oil and gas industry,” Blanchard said. “We’ve been doing activities with their students in St. Mary Parish so we just wanted to make them aware of all our activities at no cost to them.

“We write grants and we fund these projects, and want to continue to have their support toward these initiatives.”

Some of the program activities are an annual oil and gas career exploration and Females Fueling Our Workforce.

The career exploration program is focused on high school juniors and seniors interested in oil and gas industry careers.

Students are bussed to BP Houma Operations Learning Center. There students listen to guest speakers from the industry talk about engineering, safety and operations. In addition, technical colleges and universities are also present at the event.

Females Fueling Our Workforce is geared towards sophomore girls. Students are bussed to Fletcher’s campus and hear stories from oil and gas industry female leaders about their careers and families.

The purpose is to motivate girls and generate interest in pursuing oil and gas careers. The program also addresses stereotypes of the industry being geared towards men. It seeks to change the perception of the male dominated career.

“We have some dynamic women from the industry that come in from Shell, Chevron, BP, American Petroleum Institute and Washington, D.C., industry leaders,” Blanchard said.

“It’s more of a motivational thing saying you can do more and overcome barriers in their lives.”

Introductions of April students and employees are on the meeting agenda.

Students being introduced are Bria Burrell, 12th grader at West St. Mary High; Emma Grace Marin, eighth grader at Patterson Junior High; and Emily Ackman, fifth grader at Patterson Junior High School.

Employees being recognized are Kenneth Brooks from West St. Mary High, and Lisa Theriot from Patterson Junior High.

Winners of the Red Ribbon slogan and drawing contest, and district art show will also be recognized at the meeting.

The superintendent will officially appoint Eric Holden as a health and physical education teacher at Berwick High. He will also serve as the new head football coach.

In new business, the following items are on the agenda:

—Approve calendars for the 2016-17 school year .

—Renewal of administrative contracts.

—Permission to advertise for school food service and garbage collection bids.

—Permission to obtain proposals for a newspaper to serve as official journal, financial institution to serve as the fiscal agent for the school board for the year commencing July 1, and student and athletic insurance for the year starting Aug. 1.

—Announce the upcoming adoption of millage rates for 2016 held on June 9.

—Authorize request from St. Mary Community Action Agency to approve summer feeding program at Raintree Elementary and Patterson Junior High schools.

—Approve revision to the 2015-16 pupil progression plan regarding fifth grade summer remediation.

—Receive group health insurance premium to claims summary.

Before the regularly scheduled meeting starts, the school food service committee will meet at 4:30 p.m. to discuss the possibility of student lunch increases and departmental savings.