Donation of $4.1 million to employ new model at two Lafayette schools comes with questions
Photo caption: Lafayette Parish School Board members pose for a group shot with (center) Todd Mouton and Nick Pugh holding the $4.1 million donation to the Lafayette Parish School System, Wednesday, March 13, 2024. Photo by Robin May.
By Katie Gagliano
The Lafayette Parish School Board accepted a $4.1 million donation from the Pugh Family Foundation to fund a new program to overhaul J.W. Faulk Elementary and Dr. Raphael A. Baranco Elementary at Wednesday’s board meeting.
The donation, which will be used over three years, will fund implementation of the Accelerating Campus Excellence or ACE model on the two elementary campuses.
J.W. Faulk Elementary, at 711 East Willow St., serves pre-K through fifth grade students and Dr. Raphael A. Baranco Elementary, at 801 Mudd Avenue, serves kindergarten through fifth grade students. Baranco opened in 2019.
The ACE model was developed in Texas and was first implemented in Dallas ISD in 2015 before expanding to multiple districts across the state.
Todd Mouton, executive director of the Pugh Family Foundation, said the foundation began looking into the “astonishing model” in greater detail a year ago and the possibility of bringing it to Lafayette. Nick Pugh, the foundation’s co-founder, said the foundation’s team and representatives with LPSS made visits to ACE schools in Texas and Ville Platte to see the program in action.
“You make all the changes you’re dreaming of at once. You start with bringing in the best teachers in the district — no more first-time teachers. No more uncertified teachers. No more ineffective teachers. And then you bring in these other supports,” Mouton said.
The program centers on five pillars: highly effective principals and teachers, instructional excellence, an extended school day, mental health and social resilience, and parent and community partnerships.
A major visible change will be the shakeup of existing staff and leadership. The program involves employing financial incentives to attract high performing and fully certified principals and teachers to work at the ACE schools.
Jennifer Gardner, assistant superintendent for administration and operations, said of the roughly two dozen educators at Baranco, less than 10 teachers are fully certified as educators. Numbers for J.W. Faulk were not shared at the Wednesday board meeting.
Superintendent Francis Touchet, Jr. said the philanthropic gift and new program are part of his aim to take “bold and transformable” action around the district. Touchet said the two schools have not performed at the level necessary to make substantial gains with students and said it boils down to not having the right professional talent in place.
In 2023, Baranco received a ‘D’ school rating from the Louisiana Department of Education, down from a ‘C’ school rating in 2022. J.W. Faulk maintained a ‘D’ school rating in 2022 and 2023. The ratings are based primarily on state standardized testing performance and student progress.
“We have visited those schools. We have done what we can. I can tell you what we have seen — we go into a school, and we go into a classroom that is certified. We go into another classroom in the same school, and the poor education that our kids are getting in these classrooms would make every single one of you ill to your stomach,” Touchet said.
Lafayette Parish Association of Educators President Julia Reed urged the school system to be more forthcoming with educators at the schools about what transitioning into the program will look like, what the re-application process for their jobs at the two schools will look like and how they will be evaluated for the positions.
She said teachers had shared that they felt “like they’re just going to be thrown away” when they learned about the ACE program and its implications for their jobs.
“We want the extra resources for the kids, and we want the extra coaching for the teachers for sure, but I want to make sure that our existing staff is being treated fairly and transparently so that they know what is going to happen to them,” Reed said.
Touchet said qualified educators not rehired or interested in participating in the ACE program would be found employment elsewhere in the district.
Jessica Graff, a fifth-grade teacher at Baranco, expressed concerns that students will struggle when separated from educators they’ve grown to trust. Graff said she’s invested time in relationships with students not only in fifth grade, but lower grades so she already has a foundation built when students enter her classroom.
“A lot of our students tend to have their guard up with new authority, and with this ACE model you’re bringing in a lot of new authority. That is a challenge for [a student] to come to school and only recognize a handful of faces, when on the last day of school, they were able to recognize every teacher on their floor,” Graff said.
Claudy St. Louis, executive director of Bridge Ministry of Acadiana, said the nonprofit is concerned about the sustainability of the program in the long-term and whether the district will be able to financially maintain the program once philanthropic funding runs out, after the district repeatedly expressed concerns about facing financial straits as charter schools and other issues strain the district’s budget.
“Are you guys committing to put that money into the schools? Because if this is only for three years, and in that fourth year you’re reverting to what’s already been, again you’re not doing any service to the students. You’re just doing change for change’s sake and that’s not going to benefit the children,” St. Louis said.
Touchet said the district will need to make smart decisions over the next three years to ensure reoccurring revenue, so LPSS is not caught unprepared in three years when the donation runs out.
District 4 board member Amy Trahan, whose district includes both J.W. Faulk and Baranco, said she was grateful for the Pugh Family Foundation’s philanthropic investment in her district, while at the same time calling for better communication from LPSS and the philanthropic partners. She said she herself only learned the full details of the proposal in recent weeks.
“We also have to think about how we treat people, and we haven’t treated the people that we have in those schools right dealing with this matter,” Trahan said. Mouton said with the gift now accepted multiple stakeholder meetings would be forthcoming with school staff and leadership, parents, local nonprofits interested in partnering and others to discuss implementation of the program at the two schools.