The Lincoln Parish Police Jury will meet Tuesday, October 11, Lincoln Parish Library Events Center, 910 North Trenton Street. Here are the agendas and meeting times.
Employee Recognition Committee – 5:00 PM
Insurance Committee – 5:15 PM
Personnel/Benefits Committee – 6:00 PM
Police Jury – 7:00 PM
Reading proficiency for kindergarten through second grade has improved markedly from the fall of 2021, English Language Arts Facilitator Michelle Thrower told last night’s meeting of the Lincoln Parish School Board.
At the beginning of the 2021-22 school year, only 38% of students were proficient for their grade level, while 34% were a year behind, and 27% were more than a year behind in proficiency.
Said Thrower, “We’ve got to get kids reading at proficient levels by the end of the year. We set a goal that we wanted our proficiency rate to increase to 80%. We did get pretty close – so we did get our proficiency rate up to 73.5%.”
She added that the goal was to get that number up to 80% by the end of this school year and 95% by 2026.
Lincoln Schools uses the American Reading Company curriculum, Thrower said.
In other business, the board heard the monthly personnel report and approved the November salary supplement checks. Employees with a current teaching certificate will receive $3,200 and all other employees will be paid $1,600.
A rare thing happened at last night’s meeting of Ruston’s Board of Aldermen – near unanimous pushback from the council on a plan to lease the softball fields and tennis facilities at the city’s sports complex for use by Ruston High School.
As presented by City Attorney Bill Carter, the resolution was for a five-year term as requested by the school district, but when Ward 4’s Jim Pearce made the motion, he specified that the term should be for one year.
Moved Pearce, “…to approve the cooperative endeavor agreement with the term being one year, and the fee to be negotiated with the school board by the mayor.”
Some discussion ensued on how next to proceed, and Carter suggested that the resolution be postponed and brought up at the next meeting with all the terms spelled out in the document.
Said Ward 1’s Carolyn Cage, “I totally agree with you Jim, on it being one year.”
Carter and Mayor Ronny Walker agreed that almost all the city’s agreements had one-year terms, and they preferred them.
When time came to introduce the ordinance to hike the city’s electric rates, there was another interesting event.
After Walker asked “who would like to introduce this ordinance?,” there was a deafening four-second silence before Ward 5’s Bruce Seigmund spoke up and said, “I would love to introduce this ordinance.”
That ordinance will be voted on at next month’s meeting after a public hearing for citizen input.
The Lincoln Parish School Board will meet Tuesday, October 4, 6:00 PM, Central Office, 410 South Farmerville Street.
Here’s the agenda.
For the budget year of 2023 (10/1/22 – 9/30/22) Ruston’s electric distribution system will spend about $10.3 million to buy power from outside suppliers.
A new seven year contract was negotiated in 2020 at a time when power costs were historically low.
That power is budgeted to be sold to Ruston’s utility customers – residential, commercial, and industrial – for about $18.4 million. This price includes $10 million in “fuel adjustment.”
That represents a mark-up of almost 80%.
So where does the $8.1 million in gross profit go?
Here’s the 2023 proposed budget with all the revenues and expenditures.
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