Photograph: Board member Tiffany Nolan (Photograph by Bobby Ardoin)
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer
St. Landry Parish school board member Tiffany Nolan is asking District officials to consider her proposal for reducing campus violence.
Nolan, elected to her first term in November, originally drafted her plan in January, but she did not get the chance to introduce her strategy in public until last week when the item was discussed at an Executive Committee meeting.
At this point after debating the matter at the committee meeting, board members have not taken any action.
Nolan said following the meeting last week that several board members have concerns about the plan and have indicated that they want to consider the matter further.
“The St. Landry Parish School System faces a major disaster. Teachers and students are being assaulted and attacked to the point where teachers are leaving the system and students fear becoming a victim,” Nolan wrote in the introduction to her plan.
According to the plan, Nolan suggests that school officials meet with the District Attorney’s Office, Sheriff Department, municipal police chiefs and city marshals to discuss implementing her policy which includes five major ideas.
No cost projections are included as part of the proposal which includes providing one uniformed officer for each 400 students who attend every District School.
Other parts of her plan include removing all disruptive students from classrooms and providing more special needs area, prosecuting offenders under the age of 16 who are prosecuted for assaults or gun violations and requiring parents of students convicted of violent campus crimes to attend approved parenting classes as a condition of reenrolling their children into the parish school system.
The DA’s Office Nolan wrote as part of her tactical plan, should review the circumstances for each episode of school violence and initiate prosecution if it is found that parental negligence or involvement had occurred.
