Letters to the Editor

Butchering the budget process

by Patrick Flanagan

In this letter to the editor, Lafayette Parish School Board member Shelton Cobb (the board's former president) weighs in on the difficulty behind this year's budget process, calling out a number of his fellow board members over their inability to drop their power struggle with the superintendent and make the interests of the students a top priority.

[Editor's note: In this letter to the editor, Lafayette Parish School Board member Shelton Cobb (the board's former president) weighs in on the difficulty behind this year's budget process, calling out a number of his fellow board members over their inability to drop their power struggle with the superintendent and make the interests of the students a top priority.]

LPSB's Shelton Cobb

While board members are posturing trying to make a point that they control the budget they are deliberately denying our students, our instructional staff and administrators to prepare for school.

Instead of being helpful, some board members have chosen to micromanage the budgeting process because of their own personal reasons to the detriment of our children and school system.

While I am a member of this board, I am against any actions that are harmful to the students, system and its operation. And while I too realize that the board has budgetary control, the activities that we are currently going through is more of an act of butchering the budget than really applying the skills that are available to us to reduce cost and to maximize services to our community.

When you cut mileage reimbursement for social workers, for example, you curtail their ability to do the work that is needed to ensure the children's welfare and services that they desperately need.