Since becoming president of the Lafayette Parish School Board, Hunter Beasley has been no friend to Superintendent Pat Cooper.
LPSB President Hunter Beasley
Since becoming president of the Lafayette Parish School Board, Hunter Beasley has been no friend to Superintendent Pat Cooper.
Yet, in a meeting Wednesday with The Daily Advertiser's Editorial Board, Beasley appears more level-headed than he's been all year, saying he's against increasing student-teacher ratios and is open to the idea of using the school system's more than $60 million reserve fund to balance out this year's $23.5 million budget deficit. If so, that would represent a break from the other five board members - who Beasley has consistently sided with throughout 2014 - in their ongoing fight against Cooper.
Those five board members - including Mark Allen Babineaux, Rae Trahan, Tehmi Chassion, Tommy Angelle and Greg Awbrey - have been paving the way since last summer for Cooper's termination, starting with an effort to launch an investigation into the superintendent. Last week's release of Cooper's evaluation scores from school board members appeared to be an additional step towards that end, with Cooper receiving 63 zeroes.
Yet, during Tuesday's meeting with TDA, Beasley told the editorial board that the evaluation results "wouldn't be the thing to fight with the score that he had."
It'll be interesting to see if Beasley stands by his statements during Thursday's budget meeting, and whether he'll actually advocate for using the reserve fund to balance out the budget deficit, and in effect save close to 300 jobs for school system employees.
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