Board asks why experienced candidate wasn’t chosen
Concerns over the school district’s hiring practices were brought up again during a recent School Board Personnel Committee meeting. This time, several board members questioned Superintendent Dr. Rodney Lafon’s recommendation to hire a candidate for a router position in the transportation department who happened to be black. The router prepares the bus routes and manages bus driver schedules.
The questions come after a similar situation in August when board members John Smith and Ellis Alexander, both black, questioned the hiring of a new industrial arts teacher at Destrehan High School.
According to Alexander, the rest of the board approved the hire of a white industrial arts teacher who did not have a college degree over a black applicant who holds a master’s degree in the subject.
Smith said the other board members gave him “no support” when he wanted to question the administration’s hiring methods in that case.
Smith said he was concerned that the router position was the only hire being called into question considering the person recommended was black.
“Why now?” he asked the other members who were in favor of sending the router position hire back to the administration for further review.
Board members Mary Bergeron and Sonny Savoie questioned the recommendation. Bergeron said there was another candidate for the job who had experience in that specific position in St. Charles Parish who did not get recommended for hire. Bergeron said she wanted Lafon to explain why the latter candidate was not selected.
Bergeron said that she felt she better understood the choice in August, but did not understand why a St. Charles Parish Schools veteran was not recommended on this occasion.
Savoie agreed, saying his concerns were about the hiring process and that he didn’t have any problem with the individual who was recommended.
Despite the members’ differing opinions, the personnel item was passed during the Sept. 15 School Board meeting and Keondra Milligan was hired for the router position.
Lafon defended the administration’s recommendation.
“I picked the person objectively,” Lafon said. “The bottom line is it’s my job to make recommendations… and I have done that.”
During the August Board meeting, Smith and Alexander believed that the candidate recommended for the industrial arts teacher position at DHS was less qualified than a black candidate. They said they did not understand why the seemingly more-qualified minority candidate was not chosen and wanted to remand the single item back to the administration for discussion.
However, at that time other board members, including Savoie, said that remanding the item back was not necessary.
Savoie specifically questioned whether the Board should debate the matter at all in light of recent legislation passed at the state level which addresses micromanagement. He said that the board should simply vote for or against a recommendation.
“I know what’s happened in the past, but there’s a new law on the books,” Savoie said during the August meeting. “I think we have to be very careful about coercing.”
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan voiced similar concerns about a lack of minority teachers and administrators in the national school system less than a month later.
Duncan said that a lack of minority role models in schools has a correlation with the amount of minority drop-outs.
Alexander agreed and said that one example is the schools’ mentoring program. Parish schools provide mentors for children who are having trouble in school or who are disadvantaged, but the program relies on volunteers because there are not enough minority educators to do the job.
“At the schools, we have the mentor program and most of the students being mentored are African American,” Alexander said. “I’m thinking if there were more African American teachers there would automatically be more mentors and there wouldn’t be a need for people outside the teaching profession to come in to mentor these kids.”
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