LINDELL WEBB-Bossier Parish School Board District 11

Q. How long have you served on the Bossier Parish School Board, and what made you
decide to run?
A. Four years this year. I ran because people asked me to run, that’s the bottom line. The
school board member that I ran against is dead, a guy named Gary Dowden, they thought Gary
wasn’t taking care of business. Several kids that got into a little bit of trouble when they were
on the administrative committee with him, there was no leeway. There was always a vote to
send them to the alternative school. You’ve got to give a child a second chance. If he
accidentally brings a cigarette to school and gets expelled, that isn’t good. If a kid’s fighting or
bringing a gun, I agree. But little bitty things like that, bringing an Aspirin to school or Tylenol
and getting caught, they get in trouble for that. Its zero tolerance, and I agree with it up to a
certain extent, but those are kids. Another reason I’m on school board is because I love kids.
Period.

Q. Why do you think you are qualified to serve on the Bossier Parish School Board?
A. I’ve probably had about twenty-five years or longer of sales experience of sales manager
experience, Personnel Chairman at Bellaire Baptist Church, so I’ve dealt with a lot of
personnel, a lot of employees. I understand when they don’t want to work and when they do
want to work. I love teachers, but when we cut some teachers it doesn’t go real well, but we
have wonderful teachers, don’t misunderstand that.

Q. The Bossier Parish School Board recently considered a tax increase to help cushion
against cuts in state funding. Did you support the tax increase? Do you support cutting
spending? Do you support a combination of the tax increase and cutting spending?
A. Let me tell you the reason I did not support the tax increase. I know how people feel. I know
that when I first got on the school board, probably the second year we had to cull down the staff
and maintenance which was about $1.2 Million. There was a roof that had major bugs. We had
to completely replace the roof that wasn’t put on right in the first place. For some reason they
never could get that fixed. Finally, it got so bad, mildew and all kind of stuff leaking and we
just finally had to spend about $1.8 million to replace that roof. Of course we did recover about
6 or 7 hundred thousand dollars from the Air Repair deal. The Feds put four people in jail, and
there’s still a lawsuit going on with the middle school. I guess we have got a little money in
reserve that I think we can be okay this year till hopefully the economy will recover next year,
where the taxes we already have in place, sales taxes will increase when people start spending
money. That’s what we hope. Now I’m not saying we’ll never have to raise taxes, please don’t
misunderstand, but right now we don’t want to. No ma’am, I don’t agree. Yes I do, but 90% of
the budget is teachers and salaries. I do favor cutting spending but 90% of our budget is payroll.
The bulk goes to teachers. I don’t know if we’re overloaded in the central office, some people
say we are. We watch that pretty close. We watch every penny that gets spent. We don’t really
get into personnel because we cannot.
Q. Recently, the Bossier Parish School Board announced the addition of several new
positions to the school system, including Graduation Coaches, Behavior Coaches, and
Response for Intervention Coaches. What is your position on these added positions?
A. Again, I have to depend on my administration to decide what positions we need. We really
do have a proactive administration. These grad coaches, what they’re really for is the dropout
rates. They can intervene with some of these kids who are making a bad grade and get with
them, help them get tutors. A counselor does not tutor kids. The graduation coaches help them
to get to graduation. They help the kids get tutors to help them graduate. Some people say
that’s wasted money, but if you can save one child, it’s not wasted money.

Q. What do you believe is the role of a School Board member?

A. Our role is to hire and fire the superintendent and make sure he’s doing his job. We make
policies and procedures. We vote on the budget, but we don’t go up there every day and say
“how are you spending this money”. We don’t, I don’t bug the administration. We have to trust
the Superintendent to a certain extent.

Q. What are your specific plans to increase openness and transparency in the operations of
the Bossier Parish School Board?
A. Some of us make sure that it’s open. Our Superintendent lets us know everything that’s
going on, that we need to know. We don’t want to know daily things. We don’t micromanage.
Don’t you remember when the state tried to take the power away from the School Board? Well
that’s the reason. Because lots of school boards get into the business and get into hiring and
saying “I want you to hire my cousin”.

Q. In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges facing the Bossier Parish School
System?
A. Growing pains. Bossier is getting so big and not having enough schools. We’re building six
wings right now. We’re overflowing. We’re going to have to build a high school in Haughton.

Q. If re-elected to the School Board, what will be your top priority in your next term?
A. Making sure our children have a safe environment, and students and staff have a safe
environment to work and study in. Number two is to make sure every child has some kind of
trade, a technical field. If they don’t want to go to college, then we’ve got a technical school,
they can learn welding, auto mechanics, electricians. When I was a child, my daddy said, “Son,
you’ve got to have a trade to make a living.” If you can get children interested in something,
they’ll stay. But you’ve got to get their interest.
Q. Are there areas in the Bossier Parish School System which you believe could be better
served by privatization?
A. I don’t know of anything that would help by privatization. I’m not crazy about charter
schools, and I can’t answer all the questions you’ll ask me when I say this, but they don’t have
some of the red tape we have. They get the money that the taxpayers pay to them, but they’re
freer, they get out of some of the governmental mandates.

Q. What specific measures have you taken as a School Board member to provide greater
protection for Bossier Parish school children?
A. We have made sure we have SRO officers, I think we have them at all our high school and
middle schools at this time, and I think some of the elementary schools, but I don’t know if we
have them all there. I am the Security Chairman, and I have worked with Chief Dyson, and
we’re installing new cameras on all the busses. Chief Dyson got a grant for that. You’d be
surprised how much those cameras help. All our elementary schools, we’re going to make an
entrance where people can’t get in unless you buzz them in. Nobody’s completely safe, but we
just want to make sure we do all that we can do. Again, we’re proactive, we want to make sure.

Q. What areas of wasteful spending in the School Board budget have you observed as a
School Board member, and what specific measures have you taken as a School Board
member to address these areas of waste?
A. The Air Repair was one thing. Some of the supervisors and foremen were letting contracts
out themselves, not coming through the school system and checks were being written. We
don’t have to approve little bitty contracts, but we have to vote on big ones like food. That’s
one of the wasteful things. It’s wasteful. Do you know, this is the government, not the School
Board, you have to destroy cafeteria food that’s not eaten? You can’t give it to kids or to
parents to take home. They wanted to fire two poor little cafeteria workers were told by their
supervisor to “put it in your car, take it home”. And they did and they got caught. They wanted
to fire them and the School Board said “You’re not firing them.” That’s wasteful. But we do
have to vote on every contract for food, for busses, new equipment, computers, we have to vote
on that and make sure we get the best prices. We have to take bids and whoever has the best
bid, we compare apples to apples.

Q. Are there any additional areas of concern in the Bossier School System budget you would
like to see addressed?
A. The state government has called and wants to know how much we have in our surplus, you
know why? Because they want it. You know how hard it was to get that surplus? Hard. And
we’re gonna have to dip into that surplus this year because we are not going to pass that tax.
Some people may not like it, but it’s very, very important to have a surplus. Now, the State
doesn’t want to take it, what they want to do is not send you money. So we just mandated that
to pay off the rest. It’s your money and my money, not the state’s money. We’re paying off
debt. Did you know the state government took about $200 million out of the state’s retirement
system? The state got in a bind and took the money out to pay for other bills. We, the School
Board, are going to have to start standing up.

Q. What is your political party affiliation?

A. I am a full-blood Republican conservative fighter.

Q. With what part of your party’s platform do you most agree, and with what part do you
most disagree?
A. What I really have disagreed with them in the past is they’re not forceful enough. I think
that’s changing a bit. I guess the first person that comes off to me that things are changing is
Sarah Palin and that Arizona governor. The women. That doesn’t cause me to go against the Rs,
but McCain, he was so weak. That disappointed me. We just didn’t have a very strong party.

Q. What is the primary source of funding for your campaign?

A. Me. It doesn’t take a lot of money. Walking the streets, that’s what I do. And I love meeting
people.

Q. Would your current job allow you the time to attend SB meetings?
A. Yes it does. If you check my record, I think I haven’t missed more than two board meetings
and committee meetings.

Q. What is the extent of your knowledge of the LA Open Meetings Law and the LA Public
Records Act?
A. I am familiar with them. We have to advertise every meeting and the only time we can go in
behind closed doors is when we have an administrative meeting to discuss a person, but that’s
the only time. I learned about those laws when I got on the School Board. We have no secrets,
we follow the law.

Q. Do you agree or disagree with reported concerns that the Bossier Parish School System
transfer policy is inconsistent and inequitable, and what specifically hav you done to address
these reported inequities in the student transfer policy?
A. Our BSB is still under the Federal Justice decree. What that means, if a minority child wants
to go to a minority school, that’s okay. If a non-minority kid wants to get out of the minority
school to go to a non-minority school, that’s not okay. But sometimes we get to make a
decision about hardships. And we have to be careful too, it’s just like some of the better
schools, but we’ve got a lot of kids who say “I want to go to this school” and you have to be
careful of overcrowding. That’s why we have lines. I guess you could always make something
better, and we work toward it all the time, but sometimes you’re in-between a rock and a hard
place. When we do lines, we have to get a guy that is familiar with Justice Department, you
have to have 11-13% of minorities in that school district or you can’t do it. So when we do the
lines, we have to send that to Washington and they have to ok it. We can’t just do it any way we
want to. A lot of times we let kids go to different schools because there are a lot of single
parents. You got a single mother with three kids and nobody to take care of them. At least we
try to be as proactive as we can to take care of our students and our parents.

Q. As you know there was controversy surrounding the appointment of D.C. Machen to
Superintendent of Schools. For whom did you vote to replace the former Superintendent and
why?

A. I was aware of the controversy, it all stemmed from the Air Repair deal. Mr. Machen, he’s a
good guy. I did not vote for Mr. Machen, I voted for Mr. Smith. We knew there was a problem
there in the Maintenance Department. And , but there were a couple board members who found
out there was a lot of problems with some credit cards. They brought it to the administration
they didn’t seem to follow up on it. In a meeting they brought it to both of them. Then some
money went missing out of the supervisor’s safe, and that’s what started the investigation. And
then it went into the Air Repair deal. My deal with the whole mess is that Mr. Kruitoff and Mr.
Machen are where the buck stopped. And my deal is I think they should have stopped it. That’s
my feeling. So when it came to a vote it was a solid 8-4 decision that Mr. Kruitoff resign. Then
we started a search for a new superintendent. The reason I didn’t vote for Mr. Machen was
because of this Air Repair deal. I voted for Scott Smith. When we started voting, we voted for
a first choice, second choice, and third choice. I did vote for a female for third choice. First
choice was Scott Smith, Debbie Hayes was one, and the other choice he’s from here but I can’t
remember his name. Miss Hayes was my third choice.