Board also considering worker’s comp change
Breaux Bridge – The St. Martin Parish School Board heard an update from LEAN Frog’s Byron Headrick via a Zoom call regarding the company’s work to help the school system streamline its operations.
The full assessment report was about 100 pages, Headrick said, while the final report with recommendations will be around 120 pages long.
“The meeting today is basically a walk-through of what we’re seeing and the findings in the assessment and what opportunities we have developed, and then we’re going to talk about the go-forward plan,” Headrick said.
The company looked at how the central office is organized and how it supports schools; how many people each supervisor is responsible for; whether there are clear written procedures for important work; whether the district’s technology is being used effectively; and whether it is clear who is responsible for each decision and who is accountable.
The assessment began in October of 2025 and was wrapped up in April.
One of the major findings is that the district does not have a clear system for how big decisions get made about people, money and how work gets done. In addition, no clear written procedures are in place for what jobs entail.
Because of that, Headrick said, when people retire or jobs are eliminated, there is no clear communication to the people taking over those job duties about what the job entails or how to do the job and no clear accountability for those jobs.
That frequently leads to stress on employees and can affect work.
The assessment also found that the school district has the lowest student results in the Louisiana State Report Card, Graduation Rate and ACT Composite scores among nine similar- sized school districts in the state but spends at or above the level spent by those other districts.
Other Louisiana districts with similar poverty levels also score significantly higher than St. Martin Parish in those scoring metrics.
The district also spends more than it takes in (about $1.02 spent per $1 of income), and its savings reserves are at 31.7 percent. Costs for nutrition services, custodial services and transportation services also are higher in the district than similarsized districts.
Headrick said the recommendations LEAN Frog will make are intended to help improve student scores and bring spending down to 98 cents spent per dollar taken in, or lower.
LEAN Frog also highlighted five places where decision-making breaks down in the district, which affects spending and student scores.
Three problem areas the district is encountering already are expectations and follow-through vary across schools; the district is at risk of losing experienced employees; and basic systems are starting to fail.
The report said that the district must develop a clear system for how the board and administration share decisionmaking, especially on operational matters.
That is one of the central pieces of the workahead plans for the district, the report said, with the final report laying out the framework.
The report also highlighted six areas to improve, and other areas identified as problems that can be addressed after those six are accounted for.
Headrick said LEAN Frog will hold meetings with individual board members or groups of board members and administration officials.
The next steps are to work with district leadership to finalize detailed recommendations and an overall improvement plan; recommendations and improvement plan to be added to the final assessment report; and the final report to be delivered to the board and a final summary presentation provided.
School Board member Richard Potier expressed unhappiness with LEAN Frog for not presenting board members with a printed copy of the assessment before the meeting, and gave other reasons he was unhappy with the process.
Operations
“First of all, when you start talking about leadership you throw me off,” Potier said. “The leadership team, to me, should be two supervisors, two teachers, a support personnel and at least one or two board members. Then we can fully understand and get some of these points across.”
He also said the company should have moved faster, and said if staff members were not providing information quickly enough, Headrick should point out who was slowing the process down.
School Board President Mark Hebert then spoke up and said District Superintendent Frederick Wiltz would coordinate with Headrick to implement the group meetings LEAN Frog wishes to hold with different board members so that board members can express their frustrations or areas they’re happy with, and then move forward with meetings with central office staff members.
Hebert said the company should still move forward with its recommendations, while meeting with board members and staff members.
Workman’s Comp
The board also is considering a move from self-insured workman’s compensation insurance to moving to Louisiana Worker’s Compensation Corporation (LWCC) insurance.
Coy Duplantis of Brown & Brown talked to the board’s Finance Committee about LWCC, with two LWCC representatives also on hand to answer questions from the board.
Under the board’s self-insured plan, the school system has a $700,000 deductible, so the board is responsible for the first $700,000 of each claim.
LWCC’s plan would have no deductible, Duplantis said.
The board’s premium for its plan with LWCC would be $1.45 million annually and would take effect July 1. There are 30 open claims currently.
Duplantis also said that a portion of the premium is placed in an account each year and dividends are paid out from that account to insured members each year.
The first year’s dividend would likely be about 3 to 5 percent of the premium. The second year would bump up to about 10 percent, and by the time the school system is fully vested in the program in four or five years, the average dividend would be about 40 to 45 percent of the premium returned to the school system, Duplantis said.
“By year three, you kind of see where (with) LWCC, you’re kind of coming out ahead by saying, ‘Look, we’re going to pay more of an upfront premium and transfer all that risk over to LWCC to handle all your claims,’” Duplantis said.
The board paid $99,658 in premiums for its self-insured plan this year and $101,266 last year, but its costs were significantly higher than they would be under LWCC because of the $700,000 deductible for each claim, plus other costs, Duplantis said.
Hebert said he would like for the board’s attorney, Mark Boyer, took look over the proposal before a decision is made since he deals with each case. School system Chief Financial Officer Casey Broussard said that from a financial perspective, over time the LWCC proposal would save the school system money, based on current claims.
LWCC Senior Vice President Angela McGhee said LWCC was formed in the early 1990s and a lot of entities were selfinsured at the time, but rates have come down a great deal since then. Private carriers can take the strain off the school system staff of dealing with worker’s compensation claims, she said, and she added that she thinks LWCC can save money for the school system ultimately based on the history of losses from claims the school system is dealing with.
LWCC is a private mutual not-for-profit company, so any profit made from investments or underwriting is passed on to policyholders.
“We’re a mutual company, meaning we’re owned by policyholders,” she said.
LWCC Vice President of Underwriting Kyle Rickards said that LWCC declared a $90 million dividend to policy holders a few weeks ago.
Potier said that in the late 1970s or early 1980s, many school boards became self-insured because premiums were so high as a result of a lot of claims by oilfield workers against their companies. Now, he said, because of changes in laws to worker’s comp claims, he would not have a problem moving to LWCC.
In Other Business
Potier proposed having the board look into having the school system going to a four-day school week as a costsaving measure.
Board member Russel Foti said that could be a problem because students missing one day out of a four-day week would lead to higher absentee rates than those missing one day out of a five-day school week.
“On a four-day week as opposed to a five-day week, it’s exaggerated,” he said.
Additionally, electric costs and transportation costs would not be reduced much because buses still would have to be used five days a week for at-risk students, and schools would still run their lights and AC/ heating five days a week.
In addition, working parents would have to find people to care for their kids one day a week, an additional expense and hassle.
Potier also proposed consolidating small pre-K to grade 8 schools, mentioning Stephensville Elementary School. He suggested moving students from the school to the St. Mary Parish school system. The parish already sends students in grades 9-12 from Lower St. Martin Parish to school in Morgan City.
“We spend an additional million dollars a year with maintenance, driving students back and forth, and we’re having trouble finding teachers there,” Potier said.
Other board members argued the school system would have to give St. Mary Parish the sales taxes from Lower St. Martin. Potier said Lower St. Martin did not vote to support the sales tax in recent elections. Other board members disagreed with the proposal.
Miranda Restovic, Executive Director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH), asked the board to consider supporting the Prime Time Head Start program in its efforts to win the grant that is expected to come up for bid for a Head Start program in the parish.
LEH is the administrator for Prime Time Head Start in Lafayette and Iberia parishes.
The Finance Committee tabled a decision on its contract with Lafayette General Health System for athletic trainers until after hearing from LEAN Frog.
The board also heard a presentation from STAR Service to provide the school district with a fixed-cost preventative maintenance contract for the parish schools after an evaluation of each school HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system.
The goal is to extend the life of each HVAC system by two or three life cycles through cleaning and maintaining the systems, the board was told.
The company offered a pilot study at no cost to the board, after which the company would give a presentation to the board for a possible contract.
The board adopted millage rates for the 2026 fiscal year.
Wendy Breath of the Pupil Appraisement Team was honored as the Southern Scripts Employee of the Month.
