New group starts school year

• By CHARLES LUSSIER
• Advocate staff writer
• Published: Aug 11, 2009 - Page: 1B

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With girls sitting on the left and boys sitting on the right, Prescott Middle School’s new principal, Perry Daniel, announced the long-troubled middle school isn’t the same place it was last year.

“If you don’t fall in line, I assure you someone is going to lose, and I assure you it won’t be the students who are doing what they’re supposed to,” Daniel said.

Daniel was recruited from Shreveport to take over Prescott for the nonprofit group Advance Baton Rouge.

He is one of five new principals the group recruited to run its five charter schools, which opened for students Monday.

The administration of Advance Baton Rouge is different as well.

Advance Baton Rouge’s former executive director, Kristy Hebert, runs a spinoff group, Advance Innovative Education, which is separate from Advance Baton Rouge.

New Chief Executive Officer Hank Shepard, formerly with the Algiers Charter School Association in New Orleans, has recruited his own administrative team with only a couple of holdovers from last year.

Daniel is trying to focus on the future.

“The kids here look just like me; they look like my children, so I have a personal investment in what is going on here,” Daniel said.

The poor academic performance of the three schools that the group took over last year — Prescott and Glen Oaks middle schools and Pointe Coupee Central High School — may not be so easy to move past.

For its first day of the 2009-2010 school year, Advance Baton Rouge listed 1,293 students at its five schools.

All schools were well below their enrollment goals.

Of the five, Dalton Elementary had the most students with 379. The other elementary school, Lanier, had 210 students enrolled Monday.