Strategic planning group recommendations for LPSS, including closing schools and rezoning students

LAFAYETTE, La. (KLFY ) – There could be a shake-up coming to Lafayette Parish schools. This comes after a strategic planning company hired by LPSS made many recommendations to the school board at Wednesday’s school board meeting.

While many in the audience gasped at the recommended changes, LPSS will not vote on the suggestions until November.

“Our priority in this work is to maximize the number of students that are in higher-performing campuses and high-quality facilities,” Olin Parker with Civic Solutions Group, or CSG, said.

CSG was hired by LPSS to make sure the school board is effectively using taxpayer money. Since early summer, CSG has been working on recommendations. Wednesday, they presented 14 of them.

“Some of our recommendations involved, for instance, moving a school from a lower-quality facility to a vacant and higher-quality facility or taking older facilities offline and constructing new facilities that are more effecient and we believe may save money over the long term for the district,” Parker added.

The first recommendation is to build new 6th-8th and 9th-12th grade campuses on the site of Northside High and decommission the current Northside High and Paul Breaux Middle facilities.

“Paul Breaux and Northside are examples where we’re taking those older facilites offline, but we’re recommending new construction,” Parker told News 10.

More recommendations include closing Acadian Middle and rezoning students to Carencro and Paul Breaux Middle, closing Lafayette Middle and repurposing it as Lafayette Elementary; rezoning current students to Scott, L.J. Alleman, and Paul Breaux Middle Schools; and closing S.J. Montgomery Elementary and moving students to Lafayette Middle and other nearby facilities.

“S.J. Montgomery is an example of a school that is moving from S.J. Montgomery to the Lafayette Middle School campus, and we recommend changing that campus from Lafayette Middle School to Lafayette Elementary,” Parker said.

Other recommendations CSG made are closing Duson Elementary and rezoning students to Charles Burke, Ossun, and Westside elementaries; closing Katherine Drexel Elementary and rezoneing K-5 students to surrounding elementary schools to create a pre-k only facility at the existing Katherine Drexel site; and closing Comeaux High School and rezoning students.

The eighth recommendation is to reconfigure Gallet and Lindon Elementaries and Youngsville Middle to create a K-8 STEM ‘Youngsville Academy.’

“So the recommendations we made tonight, if they’re all adapted, that would represent rougly 3,600 students in higher-performing campuses and over 3,000 students in higher-quality facilities,” Parker added.

More recommendations are to add a neighborhood preference in the lottery for all 100% magnet schools; create an elementary fine arts magnet at Cpl. Middlebrook Elementary to be a feeder to L.J. Alleman Middle; and expand popular arts and STEM programming at additional schools.

The last recommendations are to consolidate Baranco Elementary, Boucher Elementary, and Faulk Elementary into two schools; and review and align magnet programming with parent demand and new high school accountability.

The 14 recommendations CSG laid out Wednesday are not set in stone. You can have your say.

There are surveys you can take, and there are upcoming community feedback sessions before LPSS makes their final decisions in November.

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