By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — The Lincoln Parish School Board met for its September 2025 session at Ruston Junior High Tuesday at noon, and passed a host of proposal presented ranging from the 2025-26 budget to a property purchase adjacent to Ruston High.
Following the invocation and pledge, Ruston Junior High School Principal Keshia Douglas address the board to welcome everyone to the meeting.
“On behalf of everyone at Ruston Junior High, I want to warmly welcome everyone to our campus and for being here today,” Douglas said. “We are proud to be the home of the Bearkits, where we strive each day to be kind, intelligent, talented, and successful. I would also like to extend a heartfelt thank you to each of our board members for their continued support in helping our students reach mastery level.”
The board first heard a presentation from Chief Financial Officer Juanita Duke regarding the proposed 2025-26 budget. See below for specifics:
| General Fund | Special Revenue Funds | Total | ||
| Beginning Fund Balance | $ 43,004,877 | $ 24,478,540 | $ 67,483,417 | |
| Revenues | $70,616,000 | $35,192,293 | $5,828,626 | |
| Expenditures | – ($64,795,653) | -($64,795,653) | – ($92,906,009) | |
| Other Sources | $5,688,626 | $140,000 | $5,828,626 | |
| Other Uses | -($6,435,374) | – ($6,435,374) | – ($13,405,120) | |
| Excess (Deficiency) | $4,539,227 | $786,563 | $5,325,790 | |
| Ending Fund Balance | $ 47,544,104 | $ 25,265,103 | $ 72,809,207 |
“We have a good budget with the number (of enrolled students) up this year,” Lincoln Parish Superintendent Ricky Durrett said. “We did have to add a few teachers late, so that is reflected in there. And as always, we want to try to be as responsible with the money that the taxpayers give us to use to the best of our abilities. I think keeping our classroom sizes small is one of our big goals, especially in Kindergarten through second grade. But also as we move up, we’re trying to offer kids everything they need for as far as graduation from high schoo. We appreciate Ms. Duke and her staff and all they do to put all those numbers together and make it work for us.”
The board then voted to purchase the property at 911 James Street, right next to Ruston High, for the appraised value of $180,000.
The board also voted to enter into an agreement with Property Casualty Alliance of Louisiana for an interlocal agreement to help bring down premiums and deductibles for potential damage and disasters to school properties in the parish. Lincoln Parish School Board President Gregg Phillips praised the agreement and spoke about how it would save the parish money.
“This is a big deal to us because two years ago, due to negative pressure on the insurance market, we had to reduce the amount of coverage that we had covering the district buildings overall,” Phillips said. “We reduced it down to about $100 million. And that was with a three percent deductible, hundred million dollars catastrophic coverage. So that was the most that we could afford and the premium was well in excess of a million dollars a year for that. Well, this year, because of some work with our insurance providers, they were able to find us a collaboration of other school districts to go in together — that’s my terminology for it.
“We’re able now to secure about $327 million of insurance with a lower deductible of two percent rather than three percent with the savings of about 23 percent, which gets our premium down to about $858,000 versus well over a million per year. It’s a great number to be well below $1 million a year for insurance. And so we were very grateful for that. It gives us broader coverage as far as the amount of dollars we have to cover our buildings, in case of a, God forbid, a tornado that wipes out multiple school buildings, or things like that.”
Back in May of 2024, the board gave approval for the administration to solicit third party administration services to manage all parts of its cafeteria plan benefits administration. The board Tuesday voted to enter a joint partnership with Gallagher Benefits Services and Pelican Benefit Advisors to begin on January 1, 2026.
Finally, the board voted to renew Medicare Advantage Plan with Part D benefits with UnitedHealthcare to go into effect on January 1, 2026, as well.
Three members of the school board were absent: Donna Doss (District 4), Lynda Henderson (District 9), Dr. Danielle Williams (District 1).
The school board is scheduled to meet again Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 6 p.m. at the LPSB office.
