A proposed elementary school along Perkins Road near Siegen Lane in southeast Baton Rouge is nearing construction, but the latest plan is to serve only about a third of the number of kids as first envisioned and to skip middle school grades entirely.
The new elementary school, which does not yet have a name, will be the companion to a new high school to be built on land purchased for $8.5 million in 2022. The high school will be located about a mile away off Rieger Road, just west of the intersection of Interstate 10 and Siegen Lane.
The new elementary school is set to open in August 2026, while the high school’s completion date is still to be determined.
The new schools are the culmination of years of planning and searching for land in a historically school-scarce area of the parish. The Perkins Road property is not within the boundaries of the on-hold City of St. George, but the proposed city surrounds it.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is set to approve moving forward with design and construction planning for the school when it meets Thursday at 5 p.m.
Earlier plans called for a school that could serve as many as 1,500 students in grades pre-K to eight. The latest version, presented to a board committee on March 8, would shrink enrollment to about 500 students and would include only pre-K to fifth grade.
Gone is to have a new school serving grades six to eight. The latest plan is to send those students to Woodlawn Middle, Jefferson Terrace Academy and perhaps Westdale Middle. Jefferson Terrace Academy, which opened in 2020, was built for 730 students from prekindergarten to eighth grade and has about 650 students now.
Eric Johnson, a director of data, said on March 8 that the greatest demand is in elementary grades, saying that at least one grade filled up recently and new students had to enroll instead at a neighboring school. But that’s not a problem currently in grades six to eight.
“The middle school grades are not as full as the elementary school grades,†Johnson said.
Board member Mike Gaudet, however, expressed concern about leaving that age range out of the new elementary school.
“I’m afraid we’re building an elementary school island without the middle school component,†Gaudet said.
The 63,141-square-foot elementary school would be built on 25 acres of land between Perkins Road and Ward Creek. The overall project cost is $29.6 million, which was increased from an original budget of $25 million due to higher construction costs.
The school system and BREC are planning a “School in the Park†to be built on the property. The parish recreation agency has two small parks adjacent to the Perkins property — Meadow and Gentilly Court parks. BREC, for instance, is to create an outdoor classroom/stage area for learning activities, as well as a walking path, boardwalk, playgrounds and play fields. The site is also using “high-performing green infrastructure,†especially to manage rain from storms.
The new school has competition. Kenilworth Science and Technology Academy, a charter school, opened a new K-8 campus in August nearby at 8716 Siegen Lane that has about 700 students enrolled.
Grace Hebert Curtis Architecture is the architect for the new Perkins Road school. To complete the design process, school officials are employing an accelerated process known as CMAR, short for Construction Management At Risk.
Rather than submitting traditional bids, interested construction companies submit “statements of qualifications†laying out why they should manage the work. And, rather than working from a finished design, the company selected participates in the latter half of the design process with the architects well before the start of construction.
Lincoln Builders Inc. is being recommended to lead up the job. The company, which was formed in Ruston but has an office in Baton Rouge, was the general contractor for the 2017 renovation of Istrouma High in Baton Rouge.
A special selection committee, which convened in October, chose Lincoln over four other contractors. Lincoln scored the highest in both its written submissions and in an in-person interview. Coming in second was a joint venture by Harvey Honoré Enterprises and Arkel Constructors, both based in Baton Rouge.
