STUDENTS WIN AWARDS IN VETERANS’ AMERICANISM WRITING CONTEST ä Page 3G
THE ASCENSION
ADVOCATE
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DONALDSONVILLE • DUTCHTOWN • GEISMAR • GONZALES • PRAIRIEVILLE • ST. AMANT • SORRENTO
THURSDAY APRIL 30, 2015 H
THEADVOCATE.COM
Darlene Denstorff AROUND ASCENSION
DDENSTORFF@ THEADVOCATE.COM
Rock Church to host Fun Fair The Rock Church is hosting its TRC Fun Fair starting at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Gonzales church. The event will feature games, hayrides, inflatables, food, drinks and activities. All proceeds go to the church’s Send a Champ to Camp program. For more information, call (225) 763-1860.
RPCC sets training classes
River Parishes Community College is gearing up to offer a variety of cost-effective accelerated workforce training classes including electrical, industrial carpentry, instrumentation, millwright, pipe fitting and welding. These programs will allow students to attend and complete accelerated workforce training in a shortened flexible class schedule, earn credentials and earn more pay as experience and classroom learning progress, says a news release from the college. Classes, set for 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, will begin May 18. For more information or to register for classes, call (225) 675-5397.
Schools ‘Say No to Mojo’
Students from Dutchtown, East Ascension, St. Amant and Donaldsonville high schools are premiering their original public service announcements warning of the danger of synthetic marijuana during a red carpet program at 6 p.m. Monday at Malco Gonzales Cinema. The “Say No to Mojo” PSAs were developed by teams of students from each school, with the winning PSA to be shown before selected movies during the summer months at Malco, a news release said. The red carpet showing and contest is sponsored by a Leadership Ascension team.
Service remembers babies
Paracletia, Inc. a nonprofit organization in Prairieville, is holding its Remembering Love 2015 memorial service at 1:30 äSee AROUND, page 2G
State gives School Board top marks BY ELLYN COUVILLION
ecouvillion@theadvocate.com DONALDSONVILLE — The Ascension Parish School Board got impressive feedback from the state Department of Education on the district’s financial risk assessment for the 2014-15 fiscal year. The state agency looks at every school district in the state and measures it on such criteria as growth in public school
enrollment, what percentage of teachers might be close to retirement and what kind of growth the district is having in sales taxes and property taxes. “It’s a stellar report,” said Diane Allison, director of the school district’s business services department, at the finance and curriculum committee meeting Tuesday. The State Department of Education found favorable external factors for the Ascension
Parish school district, such as an 8.6 percent growth in public school enrollment over the last five years and an increase of more than 34 percent in property tax and sales tax revenue over the last five years. “Ascension is growing in leaps and bounds,” Allison said. The percentage of nonpublic school enrollment in the Ascension School District is also small, compared to total enrollment, at 6.5 percent, the report
from the state says. Also in the school district’s favor is the percentage of teachers with more than 15 years’ experience. The state is looking, ideally, for a figure at less than 45 percent and, in Ascension Parish, the number of longtime teachers is 26.5 percent. If a school district has a large proportion of its teachers close to retirement, that means a drain of “brain power” for the
system, as well as increased costs related to retirement, Allison said. The school district has had no deficit spending out of its general fund for three years, the report also says. The state Department of Education deems a general fund balance as a percentage of general fund revenues to be excellent at 7.5 percent or higher. The district’s number in that category is 30.26 percent.
LEFT: A Prairieville Middle School student wears the seventhgrade’s Living in the South Day T-shirt designed by students. The Friday event included presentations about Louisiana culture and its people and a lunch of boiled crawfish and jambalaya. BELOW: Glynn Parent and his son Jeff, center from left, talk about the history of jambalaya during the program.
SOUTHERN
LIVING ‘Jambalaya is not a meat dish; it’s a rice dish,’ cook says BY DARLENE DENSTORFF
ddenstorff@theadvocate.com
Many people might assume that everyone who lives near Gonzales, the Jambalaya Capital of the World, would know everything about jambalaya. They would be wrong. But former Jambalaya World Champion cook Jeff Parent tried to educate a few Prairieville Middle School seventh-graders Friday during the school’s 10th annual Living in the South program. äSee SOUTHERN, page 5G Advocate staff photos by DARLENE DENSTORFF
Advocate file photo by HILARY SCHEINUK
Groups walk in pursuit of cures for cancer BY C.J. FUTCH
cfutch@theadvocate.com Noelle Franz’s husband died of gastric cancer in 2011, and on Saturday, she and her Relay for Life team will walk laps to honor him. When Franz’s husband was first diagnosed, Franz got involved with Relay, in part, to overcome the feeling of being
helpless to do anything to help him, she said. Now, she’s a team captain and on the board of directors for Ascension’s Relay for Life event, and she keeps going because every time she looks at her son, she wants him to live in a world where there are cures for cancer. All of the Relay for Life events around the nation raise money
for the American Cancer Society, said Michele Wingett, who, along with fellow volunteer coordinators Rhonda Collums, Roxanne Cranfield and Penny Cade, are organizing the event this year. “It’s at Cabela’s now, so I think that will be a good thing for us,” Wingett said. äSee WALK, page 3G
Participants release balloons with handwritten messages on them in memory of the lives of loved ones affected by cancer at the 2014 Ascension Relay for Life in Gonzales.
It’s not
Cinco de Mayo without chips and salsa. Visit your local Associated Food Store and get your party started.
Live Local. Shop Local.™ Your Neighborhood Supermarket. Scan the QR code for a store near you!