LAKE CHARLES, La. (KPLC) – The Jeff Davis Parish School Board will vote on buying a new insurance policy that could save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Over the last three years, the school board has had a pretty balanced budget, but officials said over those same three years, they’ve also had to make cuts.

“We had some federal funds that ran out last year, that almost everyone in the state was using,” Superintendent John Hall said.

“A business like Jeff Davis Parish School Board, 85% is salaries, so over the last three years we’ve cut as much as we can from that 15%, so when we go into cuts we try to go away from the classroom as much as we can,” Hall said.

Hall said going into this coming school year, they were looking to have to make more cuts due to the increase in expenses like medical insurance.

“We had a $300,000 increase in our medical insurance, plus several hundred thousand just in general all across, whether it be food or transportation, fuel,” he said.

However, Hall said they’ve recently discovered cheaper property insurance policies from new insurance providers.

“This year, we’re actually getting better policies and better protections for less money,” Hall said.

Last year, the district was paying around $1.7 million in property insurance.

Tuesday evening, the Jeff Davis Parish School Board Insurance committee voted in favor of a property insurance policy with a premium of around $1.1 million, providing a savings of nearly $600,000 for the district.

“Looks like we’re not going to have to have those deep cuts to have a balanced budget, so it’s very exciting, this is something that we’ve been planning all year long for, hoping and praying that it would go down, but we just didn’t know,” Hall said.

Next, the chosen policy will go before the entire school board.

Superintendent John Hall said any funding left will go towards roof repairs across the parish.

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