Official: School upgrades long-term

• By C.J. FUTCH
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Oct 11, 2009

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In Ascension School Superintendent Donald Songy’s mind, Saturday’s property tax extension, if it passes, is just the beginning of what likely will be a 20-year plan to anticipate the growing population of the parish, and the corresponding  growth in Ascension Public schools’ student population.

At just over 19,000 students today, it’s a population that has grown steadily over the past 20 years, adding students at a pace of about 2 percent to 3 percent each year. If the census projections are correct, the parish’s population will double again by 2030.

“We’ll be building the equivalent of a school a year for the next 20 years,” Songy said in a meeting with The Advocate’s editorial board, one part of a message he and his staff have been spreading across the parish over the past few months.

The tax proposal before voters on Oct. 17 is the continuation of a 15.08-mill property tax — $197 a year for a home valued at $200,000, Songy said. If approved, the tax would generate $100 million over four years.  Songy said he’s found business and community organizations to be supportive, and faces no organized opposition to the tax.

In 2005, Ascension voters approved a similar tax measure that funded the building of five schools in four years; Prairieville and Pecan Grove primaries opened in August 2008, and Spanish Lake, Lakeside and Central primaries this school year.

The School Board will break ground on a sixth primary school in Sorrento three days after the Oct. 17 election, funded by some of the proceeds of a post-hurricane spike in sales tax revenue.

Saturday will mark the fifth time Ascension schools have asked for the extension since 1993, and, Songy said, they’ll likely be asking for the same extension every four to five years for the next two decades, all to accommodate expected growth.

But this tax election, Songy said, isn’t about building new schools, but addressing the inequities that the building rush inadvertently created.

Four of the system’s schools, LeBlanc Special Services, Gonzales Primary, and Dutchtown and St. Amant middle schools, were all built in or before 1937, Songy told the Ascension Chamber of Commerce’s monthly membership meeting last week. G.W. Carver and Prairieville Middle were built in 1956, and East Ascension High School in 1965.

Those were the days before technology was in the school system’s budget. Today, technology accounts for 4 percent of the system’s roughly $200 million annual spending.
But aside from personnel salaries and benefits, which account for 78 percent of the budget, the next-largest chunk of the system’s funds — 9 percent — goes toward maintenance, another byproduct of aging infrastructure.

Assistant Superintendent Patrice Pujol said that when she was a teacher, the blackboard and chalk were sufficient tools for education.

“But there are no jobs today that don’t use technology,” Pujol told chamber members.
“State-of-the-art technology is imperative for our economy and work force,” she said.

To remain competitive — Ascension Parish is ranked 10th in the state based on district performance scores — technology has to be incorporated into the curriculum at every school, even those with circuits designed for the electrical power demands of the 1930s.