Free Republic

<p>All tenured, certified teachers who worked in Rapides Parish public schools last school year will be rehired, despite the School Board's budget decision to cut more than 100 teaching positions.</p> <p>School officials report that retirements and resignations opened up enough spaces to offer contracts to all those displaced teachers who have not yet been rehired.</p>

<p>Saturday was a good day for taxes across central Louisiana with voters in seven parishes approving all of the tax measures put before them.</p> <p>In Alexandria, voters approved an 11.25-mill, 5-year property tax renewal aimed at improving streets and drainage.</p>

<p>Body piercing, earrings and school uniforms came under attack at Tuesday's Discipline Policy Review Committee meeting, where members discussed whether to allow boys to wear braids.</p> <p>The committee briefly discussed the school system's earring policy, but quickly changed the subject when Ruby Smith, district director of child welfare and attendance, raised the issue of body piercing.</p>

<p>One in 10 Rapides Parish teachers will not be around next year.</p> <p>In a budget-cuts meeting Monday, the School Board unanimously agreed to reduce the teacher force by 160, effective at the beginning of the 2003-04 school year.</p> <p>That and other cuts brought the school system a savings of about $9 million. That is almost enough to plug the $10 million shortfall the district faces next year.</p>

<p>Tioga High School senior Tiffney Juneau let out tears of relief at Tuesday's Rapides Parish School Board meeting. The board voted to let her and many others in her shoes walk across the stage at graduation even though they have not passed their Graduation Exit Exam. Tioga High is north of Alexandria.</p>

<p>In the first six months of the current school year, twice as many students have been expelled from Rapides Parish (Alexandria-Pineville) public schools as were expelled in the same period last year.</p> <p>Principals have recommended 237 students be expelled so far in the 2002-03 term, as opposed to the 117 who were expelled in the first six months of the previous school year.</p>

Friends, community 'numb' after Pollock shooting death Mandy M. Goodnight / The Town Talk Posted on September 20, 2002 POLLOCK - A day after a 47-year-old father of five was randomly shot and killed as he drove down U.S. Highway 165, friends said they remain "numb." Cleveland Ray Cannon, Jr. of Pollock was shot at least once in the upper torso as he was driving to Alexandria to sit with his hospitalized mother. Jimmy Jack Maddox, 26, of Burleson, Texas, is accused of firing at Cannon's vehicle. Grant Parish sheriff's investigators said the two appear to be strangers and the...