The Lafayette Parish School Board members in pursuit of Superintendent Pat Cooper's job will need to search for new ammunition come 2014, when an external audit report will be released debunking their claims of malfeasance by the super.
Photo by Robin May
LPSS Superintendent Pat Cooper
The Lafayette Parish School Board members in pursuit of Superintendent Pat Cooper's job will need to search for new ammunition come 2014, when an external audit report will be released debunking their claims of malfeasance by the super.
Arguably, the most contentious issue clogging up school system business in 2013 centered on Cooper's decision to hire Thad Welch, and Cooper's refusal to fire Welch - the assistant to the superintendent for facilities, maintenance, transportation and grounds - over his lack of a high school diploma. That refusal resulted in the superintendent being reprimanded by the board in April (read more here).
Welch has also been at the center of the board's push to hire an outside law firm to investigate Cooper, and its attempt to terminate the 15th Judicial District Attorney's Office as general counsel - a service provided free-of-charge to the school system.
Cooper spoke Friday morning with The IND and says the state Legislative Auditor's office received various anonymous requests this year to look into three matters concerning the school system. He says the Legislative Auditor then directed the school system's external auditor, Kolder, Champagne, Slaven & Co., to assess and make recommendations about the issues in its annual audit (it is customary practice for the state agency and indpendent auditors to work together). In addition to the Thad Welch issue, Kolder Champagne looked into whether proper procedure was followed in Cooper's hiring of four principals on a 244-days-pay-year contract, and also released an opinion on the excessive absenteeism of five board members.
"The auditors took a long time looking at those areas and will report their findings to the Legislative Auditor and the school board either on Jan. 15 or at our first meeting in February," says Cooper.
Based on his recent discussion with the auditors (a final report is still pending), Cooper says the findings will show no policy was broken as far as Thad Welch is concerned. The only discrepancy they discovered, says Cooper, is that Welch's original application, which was submitted to former Human Resources Director Lawrence Lilly, cannot be found.
"We don't know what happened to that application; all we know is it was submitted to Mr. Lilly," says Cooper. "But as far as following policy in hiring Mr. Welch, they didn't see any error and said we didn't break any policy. Mainly because in our policy, education only accounts for 8 percent of whether a person is qualified or not. In Mr. Welch's case, he didn't have a high school diploma or a GED, and even though he didn't get credit for that 8 percent, he was still so far ahead of everyone else because of his experience in management and running custodial and transportation departments."
Regarding Cooper's hiring of four principals to work at struggling schools at a pay rate based on them working 244 days a year, the audit's findings will show the board's claims of a policy breach to also be without merit, maintains the superintendent. On average, most principals work 218 days, which varies depending on whether it's an elementary, middle or high school, but the four principals in question are being paid higher salaries for the additional days.
"They said they couldn't cite us on that either because our policy is in conflict with Act 1, which gives superintendents the ability to determine job assignments," Cooper explains. "As far as I'm concerned, [the board] will need to find another horse now, because this one doesn't ride anymore. It sounds to me like a dead issue, and that's how we'll proceed from here."
Billy Guidry, the school system's chief financial officer, says the findings of the external audit are still being finalized and should be made public shortly after the holidays.
One area that hasn't been debunked by the audit is that some board members have acrued fines totalling as much as $1,400 for the excessive absences they logged during meetings in 2013, which you can read more about here.