Board, SLU deal near on lab school

AMITE — Tangipahoa Parish School Superintendent Mark Kolwe said Tuesday he expects to reach an agreement with Southeastern Louisiana University “in the next month or so” spelling out joint responsibilities in operating the lab school on the university’s campus.

The agreement is necessary to formalize a relationship that has been in effect between the school district and SLU for more than a decade, Tangipahoa Parish Chief Academic Officer Melissa Stilley said.

SLU hires and pays the school’s director, Stilley said, while the school system is responsible for hiring and paying the teachers, she said.

The school system also pays for student transportation, school lunches and books, she said.

Formalizing the agreement would help clarify why the school doesn’t offer some instructional devices that are in other public schools, Stilley said.

Many of those are paid for out of the system’s federal funds, and SLU Lab School does not meet criteria, due to its low percentage of low-income students, to receive that funding, she said.

Other matters before the board included:

AUDIT REPORT: The school system received a “clean” report from an external auditor, meaning the system’s financial statements appeared to be in order, said Ty Harris, of Harris CPA, the Baton Rouge firm that conducted the audit.

“This is the first time we have had zero findings in a few years,” Harris said of the audit.

Harris has been performing audits on the school system’s financial system for 17 years, he said.

ATTEND CONFERENCE: Six members of the board were present at Tuesday’s meeting because board members Sandra Bailey-Simmons and Ann Smith were attending a conference in Washington, D.C., and Gail Pittman McDaniel was recovering from injuries in an auto accident.