School involvement: Donatto says schools need community involvement

St. Landry Parish’s public schools need community involvement, Mary Ellen Donatto, a Eunice School Board member, said to the St. Landry Parish Economic Development board Tuesday.
“We are at a point now where it is going to take everyone to pull us out of the situation we are in,” she said.
Donatto spoke to the economic board a day before the School Board was to interview five candidates for school superintendent.
Bill Rodier, St. Landry Parish Economic Development executive director, said in introducing Donatto, “Education is more than just the School Board and it is more than just the bricks and mortar schools. It is really societal. You could call it a challenge. You could call it an opportunity. You could call it whatever you want, but I don’t know that of one single ... denominator that we can get better at in St. Landry Parish that will affect our crime rate, that will affect our poverty levels, that will help bridge some of the gaps that we have in various types of racism and other things that become controversial. The better educated that we educate the children of St. Landry Parish the better the future of St. Landry Parish is going to be.”
Donatto said the school system has about 14,100 students at 32 sites that are graded by the state Department of Education.
Other school system facts presented by Donatto include:
— There are 23 elementary schools, two junior high schools and seven high schools.
— Grades by the state are: one A school; nine B schools; 13 C schools; eight D schools; and two F schools.
— The school district has a C score by the state.
“If you do the math we are looking at right at one-third of our schools in dire need of some help,” Donatto said.
In the next nine years the bar is about to raised to where schools are expected to be at the mastery level or better, she said. That will widen the gap between high- and low-performing schools and students, she said.
Schools will be graded on narrowing the performance gap, which is something she agreed with.
Perhaps Donatto’s primary point to the economic group was for professionals to become involved with the school system.
“When it comes to school systems there is not enough community involvement,” she said.
Community involvement is a top priority among School Board members in selecting the next superintendent, she said.
Donatto read a portion of the School Board’s policy on community involvement, then said, “That a very strong policy and I’m not even going to ask you if we have doing that.”
People need to show up at schools and ask how they can help, she said.
“What Bill (Rodier) told me one day is invite them in because when they see the condition of some of your children you will automatically want to do something. It is very difficult to look at a child in need and we have some needy children. You see it in the streets and what you see in the street is what you see in the schools,” she said.
“These are your future employees, so I would advise you to come in,” she said.
The School Board policy Donatto read to the economic development board is:
The St. Landry Parish School Board, in an effort to ensure and enhance the possibilities for excellence in the education of our children in a free society, presents and endorses this statement of policy on school and community relations because of its conviction that (a) the public schools belong in every sense to the people who created them by consent, and support them by taxation; (b) the schools are only as strong as the intelligent and informed support of the people of the community, and never any stronger; and (c) the support of the people must be based upon their knowledge of their understanding about, and their participation in the aims and efforts of the public schools.
The Board therefore reaffirms and declares its design and intent:
— to keep the citizens of the system regularly and thoroughly informed through all the channels of communication on all the policies, programs, problems, and planning of the school system, and to carry out this policy through its own efforts and the office of the Superintendent of Schools.
— to invite the advice and counsel of the people of the school system at all times and especially at all monthly meetings of the Board, except at executive sessions.
— and to solicit the sound thinking and studied counsels of the people through advisory committees selected from the community and appointed by this Board to consider those problems which vitally affect the future of our children.
Adopted: July 18, 1991
St. Landry Parish School Board