School remap made public

• By BOB ARDOIN
• Special to The Advocate
• Published: May 15, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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OPELOUSAS — A proposed school reorganization and consolidation plan approved by the U.S. Justice Department and affecting most St. Landry Parish schools was unveiled Wednesday during a special School Board meeting.

The board took no action on the proposal, which was not discussed during the meeting’s open session.

Superintendent Michael Nassif said the board can accept Wednesday’s plan, modify it or create another.

However, Nassif said the district needs to have a plan submitted for U.S. Justice Department approval in at least 120 days.

In another matter the board voted 6-4 following a closed session of about 45 minutes to swap the principals at Creswell Elementary in Opelousas and Grand Prairie effective June 1.

U.S. District Judge Tucker Melancon, who is overseeing St. Landry’s 42-year-old racial desegregation plan, recently ordered that Creswell Elementary Principal Charles Moore, who is black, be reassigned to a school whose student population is majority white.

Creswell Elementary has a student population that is predominantly black, while Grand Prairie’s enrollment for the 2007-08 school year is 81 percent white, according to figures presented at Wednesday’s meeting.

Early this year the board transferred five other elementary principals to schools whose racial compositions are historically different.

Generally. the consolidation and reorganization plan scheduled for the 2008-09 school session calls for consolidation of 10 elementary schools educating students from kindergarten through eighth grade.

It also calls for the proposed construction of several new elementary schools and a long-range plan to build a new facility at Port Barre High.

The plan also proposes building new consolidated schools. One new facility would be built for the Washington, Grand Prairie and Plaisance areas and another for Sunset and Cankton.

Another new school would be built in order to combine the attendance zones for students now attending Leonville, Port Barre and South Street elementary school in Opelousas.

Only one high school — North Central in Lebeau — would be closed, but the plan calls for that facility to be utilized as a consolidated kindergarten-through eighth grade school for students now attending Morrow, Palmetto and Melville elementary schools.