Building new schools in school-scarce southeast Baton Rouge emerged Thursday as a clear priority as the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board held the first of what promises to be many meetings to shape a package of school construction to bring to voters next year.
Board member Jill Dyason said the area between Airline Highway and Highland Road is particularly school free, as well as much of the Siegen Lane corridor.
“They are just not there and glaringly not there,” said Dyason, who has represented much of the area since 2001. “We need schools.”
Dyason said she’d like to see a new elementary and a high school built in the area and urged Superintendent Warren Drake to enlist a real estate agent to start looking now for potential sites.
“We’ve got to get some land acquired quickly, because it’s going away,” Dyason said.
Future school construction work hinges on voters renewing a 1-cent sales tax, last renewed in spring 2008. Forty-one percent of the money goes to school construction; 51 percent goes to employee salaries and benefits, and the remaining 8 percent is spent on discipline, truancy programs and technology.
The tentative plan is to go back to voters in spring 2018.
The current 10-year construction plan funded by the 1-cent sale tax paid for the renovation/expansion of Baton Rouge Magnet High and the demolition and reconstruction of Lee High, among other projects.
The 1-cent sales tax was first approved in 1998 and was renewed by wide margins in 2003 and then again in 2008. Dyason urged board members not to expect easy passage this time.
“We have a lot of people in this parish who are anti-renewal,” she said. “We have to get this right.”
The promise to build as many as six new schools in southeast Baton Rouge was a potent appeal of the St. George incorporation drive, which failed in 2015 but may revive in the future.
Recently, the School Board has authorized more educational options for the area, including adding new magnet programs set to open Aug. 9 at Woodlawn Middle and High Schools and approving a new charter school to be opened in 2018 by Arizona-based BASIS Schools next to Woman’s Hospital on Airline Highway.
Board members, however, suggested going further.
“We have to put schools where the kids are,” said board member David Tatman, who also represents parts of southeast Baton Rouge.
That point was buttressed by a preliminary report from demographer Mike Hefner, of Lafayette, whom the board hired recently. Hefner, a former Lafayette Parish School Board member himself, showed that the areas of highest population growth are concentrated in south Baton Rouge, especially around the Bluebonnet Boulevard extension.
Tatman said getting land in the area won’t be easy. He noted that in 2012 the board considered moving Lee High School and found that most of the available properties required extensive wetlands mitigation. But he said some land might be available with the right deal.
Drake said the best prospect for a south Baton Rouge school is to build one at the current location of the alternative school Arlington Preparatory Academy, off Brightside Lane. Drake also noted that the current school construction plan has money to build a school on 20 acres in the Jefferson Terrace area, but he said some residents in the area have questioned the need for the school, so he’s taking another look.
These are testing times for Park Elementary.
New construction was not the only point of discussion Thursday.
Ed Jenkins, program manager with CSRS/Tillage Construction, read from a list of 10 schools that are in the worst shape according to a facility assessment that the private partnership conduced in 2016.
Those are: Glen Oaks High, McKinley High, Broadmoor Middle, Broadmoor High, Baton Rouge Center for the Visual and Performing Arts, Buchanan Elementary, Westdale Elementary, Arlington Center, Mayfair Elementary and Highland Elementary.
Drake said there are several other schools in need of help.
He said he wants more major repairs this go-around. Too often, he noted, the school system has made small repairs to buildings only to have to later tear things up to do major work. For instance, Istrouma High received repairs in 2011 but is under renovation again to the tune of $24.1 million to replace plumbing, electrical and air-conditioning systems, items not in the scope of the initial work.
“I don’t want us to throw good money after bad, so to speak,” Drake said.
Several board members noted other work to be done.
For instance, board member Vereta Lee said Forest Heights Academy of Excellence, an A-rated magnet school in north Baton Rouge that focuses on the visual and performing arts, has a substandard theater space.
“They do need a theater where those kids can perform on a real stage and a place they can have seating and parking,” Lee said.
Drake urged board members to not be too parochial and consider the good of the entire school system as they make decisions.
“I want us to keep in mind that this is a district plan, even though the schools built will be in someone’s district,” he said.
