REBECCA BURK ELLIS / L’Observateur / August 14, 1998

EDGARD – With a sudden retirement announcement by West St. John HighSchool Principal Leroy Keller, the St. John the Baptist School Board namedassistant principal Glenda Gaudet to serve as the high school’s interim principal.

Gaudet has been teaching or acting as an administrator at West St. Johnfor her entire teaching career.

She earned her bachelor’s from Southern University in Baton Rouge and her master’s from Nicholls in supervision and administration. She has been theassistant principal for the past five years and taught business at the school since 1973.

The thing Gaudet has enjoyed the most during her years of teaching is helping students. “I enjoy working with the kids and seeing them reachtheir full potential and seeing them blossom,” she said. “That gives me ahigh feeling to realize that I have helped someone along the way.”Although she will miss Keller, she is excited about the coming school year. “We hope to start the school year with a very good start,” she said.”We will all miss Mr. Keller, but we are all only at a certain place for acertain time.”Gaudet’s main goal is to improve the test scores at the Edgard high school.

“In order to do that it’s going to take the effort of the entire faculty, students, business, industry and community together,” she said.

She added that she plans to set up a council to help improve the school.

“We need to see where the school is and where we need to be,” she said.

She also plans to implement the School to Career concept because this is the first year that the program is being officially implemented at the high school. “With that program, not only will we improve test scores, but wewill make sure that all of our students will be able to succeed,” Gaudet said.

With a new principal changes are sure to occur; however, Gaudet said one thing will stay the same. “We want to make sure we involve and get inputfrom everyone,” she said.