EBR School Board panels to begin

Three task forces focusing on finding ways for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system to save money, expand prekindergarten and create schools more rooted in their surrounding neighborhoods are getting underway this month.

These three areas are ones that School Board members deemed the school system can wait no longer to tackle.

Each task force is likely to have about 10 members and each is led by two School Board members. The board members have yet to settle on the other members of each task force or on future meeting dates, though leaders of all three task forces say they will make those determinations in the next two weeks.

“I’m hoping that very, very soon in the new year, everyone will have their first meeting,” said board President Barbara Freiberg.

Freiberg announced the formation of these task forces on Dec. 1. Flanked by her 10 fellow board members, Freiberg revealed the initiatives at a news conference, during which she noted that the School Board has spent much of the past year rewriting its strategic plan, but the wide-ranging effort is still months from completion and the board has things it needs to act on right away.

Here are the task forces:

• Community Schools Task Force, led by School Board members Jill Dyson and Evelyn Ware-Jackson. This task force will examine how to make local schools reflect their communities, looking, among other things, at redrawing attendance zones and the placement of gifted and magnet programs.
• Early Childhood Task Force, led by board members Connie Bernard and Vereta Lee. They’ll examine how to expand and ultimately make prekindergarten and other childhood education programs open to all children in the school district.
• Efficiency of the System and the Budget Task Force, led by board members Jerry Arbour and Craig Freeman. They’ll research how the school system can function more efficiently, saving enough to blunt the impact of likely budget cuts for 2012-13, last estimated at $34 million.

Each task force is seeking a slightly different mix of people.

Dyason said the Community Schools Task will include, among others, a teacher, a parent or guardian involved in a parent-teacher association, and a school nurse.

“We’re trying to get a good cross-section of people from different parts of town,” she said.

For the Early Education Task Force, Bernard said she is reaching out to several people who work with groups, such as the Academic Distinction Fund and the Children’s Coalition, that focus on early childhood issues.

Lee, her co-chairwoman, said she is pressing to have more parents and teachers on the task force.

“These are the folks who we need to make this happen,” Lee said.

Arbour said the Efficiency of the System and Budget Task Force will likely include a principal, a teacher and a guidance counselor, but also representatives from the business community.

Keeping each task force at about 10 members is a conscious choice.

“You don’t want to get these groups so large you can’t get anything done,” Dyason said. “We really want it to be a working task force.”

The committee with the biggest potential agenda is the Efficiency of the System and Budget Task Force.

Arbour said everything is on the table.

“Pretty much everything where we spend money, we’re going to look at what we can do differently,” he said.

Right before the winter break, he and fellow chairman Freeman received a big batch of financial documents to review.

Among other things, this task force is looking at transportation, outside contracts with companies such as Aramark, school construction, as well as reviewing organizational charts.

“We want to make sure that the people working for the system are touching kids,” Freeman said.

Arbour said he is open to having an outside financial audit, something recommended by a community group that’s been working to revise the strategic plan, but he said he may look to do a few departments at a time. He also suggested the money to pay for such a review might have to come from private sources.

While these task forces are working separately, they will find themselves focused on similar areas at times.

For instance, the Early Childhood Task Force is looking at ways of paying for more pre-k classrooms in schools with few or no such classrooms now, while the Community Schools Task Force is looking at the same issue, but with an eye towards shortening bus rides for young children and creating more community re-engagement.

“A lot of these committees, the suggestions they bring forward are interrelated,” Bernard acknowledged.