Northeast residents: Schools must change

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 5, 2009 - Page: 1B

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A small group of residents in the Northeast area told new East Baton Rouge Parish Superintendent John Dilworth they want community schools that educate kids from Pride and Chaneyville, not from inner city Baton Rouge.

“We’re busing kids up from Baton Rouge and that’s causing a problem up here,” said Robert Williams, a retired school system administrator who now works as director of student services for the Central school system.

Jennifer Patterson, who has two children at Northeast High and another child who has already graduated, said she loves her rural community, but said the high school has too many problem students from elsewhere.

“My husband is a police officer, he sees it every day, and I don’t want that to come out to my school,” Patterson said.

“The community feels like they have been left out,” said Barret Hargrave, an agriculture teacher at the high school.

Dilworth listened to these comments in the auditorium at Northeast High School. He was there for his fifth community forum since taking over July 1 as superintendent, moving to Baton Rouge after serving for two years as superintendent in Montgomery, Ala.

He pushed back a bit on what he was hearing.

“I hate the fact that we are letting somebody’s ZIP code dictate what their worth is,” Dilworth responded.

“I know what it’s like to walk into a classroom and people don’t want you there,” he added.

Cross-town busing, common when the school system was under federal court orders to desegregate, ended in 1996. Still, minority students from Baton Rouge have for years voluntarily transferred to Northeast schools, first through a program known as majority-to-minority transfers and more recently through school choice transfers.

For the past two years, Northeast High has ceased receiving such transfers. But its attendance zone was extended south into Baton Rouge in 2003 when Baker and Zachary broke away to form their own school systems. Northeast had its zone redrawn when Central broke away in 2007 to form its own school system, and lost many students as well to Central schools.

Williams stood up and told Dilworth that’s not what he and other Northeast residents are saying.

“It’s not that we don’t want the kids here,” Williams responded.