CHRISTINE HARVEY / L’Observateur / July 31, 1999

LUTCHER – P. Edward Cancienne is continuing to shake things up in hisfirst month as St. James Parish’s school superintendent.At his request, two last-minute items were added to Tuesday’s school board meeting agenda, causing one board member to question Cancienne’s ideas on both.

Member Willis Octave balked at Cancienne’s plan to reassign St. JamesHigh School Principal Ridgely Mitchell to the principal’s position at the parish’s Learning Academy, an alternative school for students with behavioral problems.

Octave said it would be difficult to endorse the superintendent’s plan after having spoken to parents at St. James High who support Mitchell’sbeing there.

He said the Learning Academy’s students are limited in what they can learn in their time there, which can be as little as six weeks for an elementary school student or nine weeks for a high school student.

Mitchell, who has been the St. James High’s principal for just a year,would be better left working where he is, Octave said.

Cancienne defended his plan to move Mitchell and announced as his replacement Jude Reulet, who currently works in the school system’s central office as the parish’s instructional supervisor for grades 9-12.

He said Reulet would bring positive energy to the position and would be embraced by the community, where he is well-known.

Reulet previously served as assistant principal at St. James High Schooland also as a science teacher. He was Vacherie Elementary’s principal justprior to taking the central office job.

“I am looking forward to working with the kids again,” said Reulet, who only learned of the job change on the same day of the meeting where it was approved.

The board approved the change 5-1, with Octave voting against the measure.

Reulet’s position in the central office will not be replaced but will be handled collectively by other staff members, Cancienne said Cancienne’s other request to the board was to approve a salary increase for the principals of the parish’s two high schools, St. James and Lutcher,giving them each an additional $7,000 per year.

Again, Octave questioned Cancienne’s reasoning, wondering why he wanted to give such high raises and why give them to only two people out of all of the parish’s schools. He also said he feared a backlash from others inapproving the measure.

Cancienne said he is trying to get approval for employing the principals year round instead of only during the school year, and the raises go along that line of thinking.

The principals have worked all summer without compensation, he said.

Cancienne also said he would work this coming year to get raises for the parish’s other school principals.

Octave requested that in the future Cancienne give more notice to the board of all such requests so members can vote with more cognizance on the measures brought before them.

Member Lloyd LeBlanc voiced his support for Cancienne’s quick action on important matters and said he believes the changes are all for the better.

“For a year we’ve been stagnant and not doing anything,” he said.

In other business, more than $316,000 was recently awarded to the school system through two sources, the TLC Consortium Professional Development Grant and the Teaching, Learning and Technology Center Implementation Award, said Rhonda Lee, technology facilitator.

The money will be spent on items including computer equipment, software, training, a training coordinator, a lab and technical support, she said.

The expectation of the new equipment is that students whose teachers receive training on it will show a 2 percent improvement in the reading and English language arts areas of the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills by the spring of 2000.

The equipment will be located at Gramercy Elementary for convenience sake to both St. James and St. John Parish teachers, who will split thetraining time allotted.

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