SLPSB Deals With Serious Debt
BOBBY ARDOIN
St. Landry Now.com Editor
St. Landry Parish school board members appeared stunned Tuesday night as they listened to Finance Director Shaun Grantham tell them that financially the District is “living check to check and bleeding cash.”
Board members listened without comment as Grantham, in a prepared statement, delivered the financial reality check which indicates the school system is scheduled to end a 2025-26 budgetary year June 30 with a $3.94 million debt along with an anticipated $18.17 general fund loss.
What that means, said superintendent Milton Batiste III, is the District will now discuss ways of dealing with the substantial revenue loss, a situation which could include school closures and consolidations, staff reductions and other cost cutting measures.
The Board will convene into a financial retreat June 13 in order to begin proposing solutions.
Grantham said the District is unable to amend the general fund budget for 2025-26 because state law won’t allow approving budgets that are unbalanced.
Board members seemed somewhat incredulous after Grantham told them that the District would probably not be able to operate past October due to insufficient revenue streams and expenditures.
However during the past two months, Grantham has provided a Financial Committee with statements which showed general fund revenue losses of nearly $8 million at the end of April..
On Tuesday night Grantham alluded to her efforts to make board members aware that the District has been in a tenuous financial situation for several years.
“This decision should not come as a surprise to you or anyone in this room. Three years ago I began warning you regarding our financial decline. We need to make adjustments now,” Grantham told board members.
School system finances, Grantham said, became an exponential problem following the loss of federal COVID-19 (ESSER) funding.
“I said (in 2024) that once ESSER ends, we will be in trouble,” Grantham pointed out as she read her address to the Board.
The District faced a similar financial problem in 2011, when board members applied for a financial emergency with state officials due what was then an impending $4.62 million general fund deficit.
Board members then applied to state officials for a $3 million loan to help pay off that debt while instituting a plan that included layoffs that primarily affected central office and maintenance staff.
Internal auditor Tim Carron presented a 2026-27 financial plan to board members last month which showed ways the finance department can shave approximately $93,000 of projected expenses.
The Board has also presented with a list of school site employees absences for 2025-26 in order to determine how much was possibly spent on substitute pay over a nine-month period.
Board member Kyle Boss proposed closing school campuses in order to save money.
Raymond Cassimere, another board member, said it is obvious that the District has “exhausted” ways to curb its financial problems.
“We have to create a budget that is not set up in the red and that takes a lot of time and work. I understand that, but we are going to have to do it, with everything we have,” said Cassimere.
