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The Vermilion Parish School Board will vote Thursday on giving all employees a pay raise that will cost the school district just under $2 million.
Superintendent Tommy Byler addressed board members during Monday’s Committee of the Whole Meeting. Byler presented how his department devised a way to give teachers and administrators a $ 1,500-a-year pay raise. Also, the support staff will get a $ 750-a-year pay raise.
“This was the only number we could afford,” Byler said. “This is what we could do.”
If approved, the salary for a first year teacher will be $44,400 a year.
Byler said the school district could give raises because of all of the cost-cutting measures administrators and department heads have been able to find over the last year.
The Superintendent also informed the board members that there are 10 staffing positions on the books that are being taken off the books. Those positions have either been combined with other positions or just not filled over the years.
Eliminating 10 staff positions will save the school district $700,000 million.
Byler said the raise is necessary to hire certified teachers. Vermilion ranks 11th in the region in pay and seventh out of eighth in Acadiana.
“My vision from day one was for us to be competitive in the market with salary schedules,” said Byler. “When I took this job, we were going to find a way to give raises. This is not the amount I was hoping for. But it is something.”
Not counting a state-given raise, it has been 14 years since the school board approved a pay raise for its employees.
The school board will vote on the raise at Thursday’s meeting. If approved, school employees will begin getting the raise next school year.
School Board member Jason Roy thanked the Superintendent but added, “I do not think the raise is enough. We are the best district around but thousands of dollars behind.
“If uncertified teachers are teaching you, what good does the raise do?” Roy said. “This parish is always a step behind.”
Roy said he would rather see 28 students in a classroom being taught by a certified teacher than less students in a school taught by a non-certified teacher.
The school district had around 100 non-certified teachers in the classroom this school year. That is the most ever.
Byler also informed the school board that a non-certified teacher would remain at Step 0 and receive the lowest teacher pay despite how long they teach in the school system. The non-certified teacher will only see a pay increase when they become certified, Byler explained.

In days long gone by, when people thought we could shoot as many ducks as we could hit, and when they were in big demand at New Orleans restaurants, hundreds of sharpshooting market hunters earned a good living in the south Louisiana marshes.
People said Florine “Pie” Champagne was the best of them.
Pie was born Aug. 4, 1889. He was barely into his teens when people began to notice that he was a better shot than most grown men, and was earning a living with his shotgun by the time he was 17.
He was only 19 in 1908, when he and his brothers Henry and Alcee organized a camp on a little bayou south of Lake Arthur. That lasted only a few years, but the Champagne boys were recruited by Fred Dudley, who bought 10,000 acres of marsh and set up a professional operation.
Dudley guaranteed 2,000 mallards a day to the restaurants in New Orleans. Pie’s quota was 200 ducks. He not only met that quota with ease, but shot so well that his ducks seldom had BBs in parts that might chip a diner’s tooth.
He began to earn big money and a bigger reputation, but it didn’t last. He was still a young man when his trade was all but abolished. Market hunting came to an end in 1918 with passage of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act that ended commercial sale of migratory birds. Pie had to find other uses for his skill.
The next year, in 1919, Pie, his brother Henry, and their friend Bob Wortham formed the Three Aces Hunting Camp, and began to cater to affluent hunters looking for a class camp and class company.
Pie provided both. It’s said that he was a great storyteller, and his skill at the camp’s poker table became almost as legendary as his shooting skills. The Three Aces guest list regularly included names found in New York society pages, baseball greats such as Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, even Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was an avid hunter before he was stricken with polio.
But his skills were known only locally until 1922, when Texas cattleman Jim Gardiner made Pie his personal hunting guide and talked him into entering the Southern Zone Trap Shooting Championship in Atlanta. Pie had never competed before, and the regulars laughed, not always behind his back, at the funny, French-accented fellow who used an antiquated 12-gauge shotgun.
They’d quit laughing by the end of the week, after Pie beat them all. He went on to win state, local, and regional titles for years to come.
It didn’t take long for his reputation as a skeet shooter to spread far and wide, and he used his fame to market his camp and the duck calls and decoys he’d begun making. (A newspaper article promised that hunters who used Champagne decoys came home with more birds, especially if they used Pie as a guide.)
Pie’s career as a guide and shooter seemed to be over by 1951, when arthritis abetted by years of wading through frigid marshes had crippled him so that he couldn’t stand up for any length of time. He spent most of his time sitting on his front porch, weaving cast nets and telling tales of the old days to anyone who would listen.
That’s why it caused some dismay when he decided to enter the trap shoot that was part of the big Golden Oil Jubilee organized in Jennings that fall to celebrate the first well drilled in south Louisiana.
His son and some friends tried to talk him out of shooting. Pie was 62 years old and in failing health. They were afraid that he would embarrass himself. They wanted him to be remembered for his glory days.
Pie insisted, and a large crowd gathered at the skeet site off Highway 90 on Sunday morning, September 23, to watch the man of legend.
They worried about how steady his aim would be. He couldn’t stand like the other shooters, but hobbled onto an old kitchen stool he’d brought from home.
They groaned when he missed his first shot.
But that was their only groan and his only miss. He won the singles competition. Then the doubles. Then the overall, for a triple crown.
Pie Champagne had again proved himself “the best shooter there ever was,” and reminded front-porch visitors of that fact until his death in 1966.
You can contact Jim Bradshaw at jimbradshaw4321@gmail.com or P.O. Box 1121, Washington LA 70589.

Six Vermilion Parish baseball teams earned entry into the Louisiana High School Athletic Association state playoffs on Tuesday, led by North Vermilion, the No. 2 seed in non-select Division 2.
Twenty-four teams were chosen for each of the five non-select divisions, and 20 for each of the top four select divisions. Ten teams were chosen in select Division V.
Non-select divisions 1-3 play a best-of-three series from the first round through the quarterfinals. The top eight teams in those divisions draw first-round byes.
Non-select division IV and V play in single-elimination brackets with the top eight seeds drawing first-round byes.
In select divisions I-III, teams play best-of-three series in the first, second and third rounds. The top 12 teams draw first-round byes with seeds 13-20 playing in the opening round.
Select divisions IV and V are single-elimination brackets.
In select Division IV, the top 12 teams have byes and seed 13-20 play in the first round. In Division V, the playoffs begin in the regional round with the top six teams drawing byes and seeds 7-10 playing single-elimination games.
First-round series must be finished by Saturday.
The state tournament (semifinals and finals) will be held from May 9-13 at McMurry Park in Sulphur.
North Vermilion is 24-7 overall and will play the winner of a first-round series between No. 15 Kaplan (17-12) and No. 18 Albany (14-15).
Erath (17-12) is No. 11 in the Division II non-select bracket and plays a best-of-three series with No. 22 Belle Chasse (13-17) at Ross Granger Field in Erath. The winner advances to a series at No. 6 North DeSoto (24-7) in the second round.
Delcambre (18-6) is the No. 7 seed in non-select Division IV and has a first-round bye. The Panthers will play a second-round game at home against the winner of a frst-round game between No. 10 East Beauregard (14-5) and No. 23 Kentwood (7-11-1).
Gueydan (17-9) is No. 15 in non-select Division IV and plays a home game on Wednesday at 5 p.m. against No. 18 Pickering (10-11). The winner advances to a second-round game against No. 2 Logansport (12-10).
Vermilion Catholic (15-10) is No. 14 in select Division IV and opens the playoffs against No. 19 Delhi Charter (17-8) at Sellers Field. The winner travels to No. 3 Glenbrook (22-8) in the second round.

The Vermilion Parish School Superintendent thinks it is an excellent idea for the Louisiana Legislature to pay resource officers in schools. Still, there is one slight problem with that idea.
How are schools going to find these school resource officers? Despite having the funds to pay them, Vermilion Parish is still looking for high school resource officers today.
“Funding would help, but it is more of a human capital issue at this point,” said Superintendent Tommy Byler. “Maybe increasing funding (for resource officers) could draw more interest in these positions.”
A school resource officer is a career law enforcement officer with sworn authority who an employing police department or agency deploys in a community-oriented policing assignment to collaborate with one or more schools. In other words, they are a trained police officer certified to carry a weapon.
The parish school district tries to use police officers from the Abbeville Police Department, Sheriff’s Office, or retired officers.
However, the Abbeville Police Department can not spare an officer during the day, so Abbeville High has a school safety officer.
Gueydan schools and Kaplan schools have officers who visit the schools throughout the day.
Resource officers are at North Vermilion High School and middle school, J.H. Williams Middle School in Abbeville, and Erath High and Erath Middle School.