Board changes meeting schedule

• By CHUCK HUSTMYRE
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: Jul 8, 2009 - Page: 4B

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BAKER — The Baker School Board voted Tuesday to stop holding its regular meetings twice a month.

Starting in August, the board will meet only on the first Tuesday of each month.

Board policy requires only one meeting per month, with an optional second monthly meeting. For at least four years, the board has met twice each month.

Board President Pam Malveaux said the board will use its newly reorganized committees to do more of the board’s routine work.

The board also heard a report from Kacy Edwards and Julie Scott, of Career Compass, a Baton Rouge nonprofit that worked with Baker High School seniors during the past school year to help get them into post-secondary education programs.

Scott said all 72 seniors they counseled either applied to or were accepted into technical schools, military training, community colleges and four-year universities.

Scott said her company paid for or obtained waivers for nearly 60 percent of the application fees for the schools the students applied to.

Most of the costs of the program were reimbursable from government funds, Scott said.

Nevertheless, the board decided not to renew the nonprofit’s contract.

Baker High School Principal Ernest Morris told the board the Career Compass program duplicated the work of his guidance department, a claim Edwards and Scott strongly denied.

In other business, the board approved a partnership with the U.S. Census Bureau to help the agency distribute information about the 2010 census.

Lorita Frank, a partnership specialist with the federal agency, asked Baker school officials to help reassure reluctant parents that any personal information they give to census workers is confidential.

“It’s safe,” Frank said. “You don’t have to worry about people locating you who you don’t want locating you.”