Money money money monnnnn-ey . . . MONEY!

You know, if I ran a school system and had a $66 million dollar windfall, the first thing I'd do is dedicate a chunk of it to recurring expenses, like giving everybody a raise, with no thought about how people usually expect to keep those raises -- even after that extra revenue paying for them is long gone.

And I'd never give a second thought to dedicating that tax-money bonanza to a desperately needed one-off renovation project -- one all that extra cash could more than pay for right now. Nuh-uh.

But then again, I'm a flippin' moron. And it looks like I'm not alone.

The Advocate in Baton Rouge, La., has the plain poop on the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board Follies:

With a surplus of at least $66 million, the East Baton Rouge Parish school system is weighing how best to spend, but not squander the money.

For the second year in a row, the school system has ended a fiscal year with tens of millions of dollars in the bank. The strong financial showing is outlined in the school system’s annual audit approved Thursday by the School Board.

Only three years ago, the system was trimming spending and outsourcing custodial, maintenance and nursing services.

The post-hurricane local economy, and millions in extra federal aid, helped create the surplus.

State and local school funding picked up the slack this past year, but is not expected to maintain its post-hurricane pace.

The board on Thursday immediately dipped into the surplus to finance a midyear, across-the-board pay raise for all employees.

Superintendent Charlotte Placide outlined for the School Board some of the initiatives the system is considering pursuing in the near future:

* A new plan for school construction and repair over the next 10 years.
* Instructional audits of low-performing schools.
* More career-based programs.
* A new math initiative, similar to an expensive literacy initiative rolled out over the past two years.
* A new “data warehouse” to allow for better use of existing school data.

“This administration, this staff, is turning this district around,” Placide said forcefully. “I don’t want anyone to say we can’t think out of the box.”