About 100 people showed up Tuesday at Scotlandville High School for the first of four final community forums aimed at shaping school construction in East Baton Rouge Parish over the next decade.
Parents with Baton Rouge Foreign Language Academic Immersion Magnet School came out in force to six previous forums last fall on the same topic without anything to show for their advocacy. But those who turned out Tuesday heard some good news: They finally made the list.
East Baton Rouge Parish school system officials have added the BR FLAIM elementary school to a big and still changing list of construction projects the school system intends to tackle between 2019 and 2029. The price tag is about $417 million, which is the estimate for the money that will be raised for school construction if voters on April 29 renew a 1-cent sales tax devoted to education. The School Board plans to vote Feb. 22 on a final project list, or “Tax Plan,” to present to voters.
About a dozen residents of Baton Rouge on Thursday night sat at four tables in the Istrouma High School cafeteria and were given a task. They …
The latest plan makes changes to at least eight major projects. One of those changes would move BR FLAIM to Broadmoor Middle School once major renovations are made to that campus, 1225 Sharp Road. Broadmoor Middle has just 376 students, making it one of the smaller middle schools in town. Its students would be added to another middle school in the area.
BR FLAIM operates in two locations: Mayflower Street and Polk Street. The elementary school in turn feeds into a middle school program at Westdale Middle School. All of these programs immerse children in French, Spanish and Mandarin Chinese. BR FLAIM supporters have for years pressed to bring students from all three places onto one campus.
In August, BR FLAIM is moving to the former Valley Park junior high campus, 4510 Bawell St. It’s big enough to allow two of the three programs to be at one place, but not big enough to allow the middle school program to join them without more renovations.
Moving to Broadmoor Middle would allow a full reunion of all of those programs.
“We were excited to go to Valley Park. We are ecstatic to go to Broadmoor Middle,” said Justin Lemoine, who has two children at BR FLAIM.
The list presented Tuesday is the fourth version, but it is still bare bones. It has no price tags for each of the projects, though they collectively are estimated to cost less than $417 million.
East Baton Rouge leaders trim $132 million from school construction plans, but upgrade some projects
East Baton Rouge Parish school officials have trimmed their school construction wish list for the next decade by $132 million as they prepare …
An in-house committee has been meeting since last summer to refine the list. The school system has set up a to allow residents to stay informed about the tax plan.
While BR FLAIM parents came away happy, other schools are still vying to get a bigger share of the pie.
Thomasina Joseph, who works as a clerk for the magnet program at Scotlandville High School and has sent all her children to the north Baton Rouge high school, said she’s happy the high school will receive some improvements, primarily for athletic facilities. But she said it needs more.
“We really need a full-service engineering lab,” she said.
The three remaining forums, which all start at 6:30 p.m., are as follows:
- Thursday at Glen Oaks High, 6650 Cedar Grove Drive
- Tuesday at Broadmoor High, 10100 Goodwood Blvd.
- Feb. 6 at McKinley High, 800 E. McKinley St.
