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Photograph: Superintendent Patrick Jenkins (Photograph by Bobby Ardoin)

BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Consulting Writer

St. Landry Parish public schools are scheduled to open Thursday as part of a staggered arrangement that Superintendent Patrick Jenkins thinks could perhaps serve as a preventative measure against the recent surge in COVID positivity rates.

According to a plan devised by central officer administrators, half of the students registered for 2022-23 will report Thursday for the first day of classes, while the remainder of those attending public schools this year will experience their initial classroom instruction on Friday.

“We’re beginning school by using our A and B student groupings or cohorts because of COVID. We want to get those (groups) established at the start of school in case we have to use them later in the year due to COVID,” Jenkins said following a Board meeting last week.

The presence of a parish wide COVID spike during July Jenkins added, will allow students to optionally wear masks inside school buildings and classrooms, Jenkins added.

“Right now we are not mandating using masks, but we are taking the same precautions we have used over the last two years to limit any problems with might have with COVID,” Jenkins said.

School personnel will begin attending in-service training meetings on Tuesday. Another session is set for Wednesday.

School Staffing
Personnel Director Matthew Scruggins told board members during a meeting Thursday night that about 40 employment positions at all levels within the District remained unfilled.

That number is considerably less than the nearly 100 positions that remained available during the final week of July, according to the St. Landry Parish School Board website.

School Safety
Jenkins and board members have discussed campus safety issues during several committee and regular board meetings during the past two months.

At this point board members approved an operating budget which allows Jenkins to negotiate the employment of resource officers for rural schools in addition to working out similar arrangements with the municipal police forces and city marshal personnel in Opelousas and Eunice.

The Board also tasked Jenkins with mandating school principals to prepare crisis manuals at their campuses.

St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz has agreed to have deputies provide security training at school campuses.

Corporal Punishment
The Board agreement unanimously on Thursday to abolish a previous District policy that allowed the use of corporal punishment to address student misbehavior.

Jenkins said that using paddling, spanking or other means of corporal punishment is a disciplinary action that he thinks is unacceptable in modern school systems.

Previously the school district allowed what it described as reasonable corporal punishment that would be administered primarily by a teacher or principal.

Special needs students were not affected by the previous corporal punishment policy.

COVID Report
Head School Nurse Sylvia Brown told an Executive Committee July 28 that at that point the St. Landry COVID positivity rate remained high.

St. Landry Parish Head School Nurse Sylvia Brown Discusses COVID. (Photograph by Bobby Ardoin.)

According to a community level statistical chart, St. Landry had reached 27 percent positivity. Statewide the positivity rate was at 28 percent.

Brown said CDC guidelines recommend the use of masks indoors in public places.

As school starts, Brown said positive cases detected on campuses will require individuals to isolate for five days.

“Students can come back on Day 6, but the students who choose to do that must wear masks until Day 10,” Brown said.