Setting timeline next step for Ascension schools

• By C.J. FUTCH
• Advocate River parishes bureau
• Published: Nov 2, 2009

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School Board approval of a proposed timeline is the next step for approximately $100 million in construction, renovations and upgrades in fast-growing Ascension Parish, school system officials said.

On Oct. 17, voters approved the School Board’s bond issue for the work. Revenue from the bonds will fund a campaign expected to affect 20 campuses on both sides of the Mississippi River, addressing the inequities in infrastructure at some of the parish’s oldest schools.

Chad Lynch, planning and construction director for Ascension Parish schools, met with the School Board’s Strategic Planning Committee last week to outline a preliminary draft of the plan to spend the money over five years.

The timeline, which Lynch said will begin with Year 1 starting in January, is ultimately subject to the approval of the board. The campaign will include a nearly $2 million electrical upgrade for Dutchtown Middle School and $2.7 million in electrical and restroom upgrades for St. Amant Middle School.

Both schools were built as a part of Works Progress Administration projects in the 1930s during the Great Depression, and are not geared to handle modern classroom technology, Superintendent Donald Songy has said.

Some old classrooms have just two electrical plugs, he said, “one at the front, and one at the back.”

Lynch said he wants to get started on smaller projects in the first year of work, leaving his department time to map out the largest projects — classroom additions to Gonzales Primary, another WPA building; $15 million in renovations to Prairieville Middle and a new $16 million facility to replace George Washington Carver Primary, both built in 1956.

Those projects are slated for Years 2 and 3 on the timeline, Lynch said. The School Board is still shopping for a site to build the Carver replacement.

Approximately $5 million in system-wide technology improvements, including security cameras on all campuses, are planned in between Year 1 and Year 2.

All told, there are 60 individual projects, to be carried out on 20 campuses, are broken down into 28 packages, Lynch said, meeting out roughly six per year over the five years.

Voters agreed to extend an existing 15.08-mill property tax that now costs property owners with a home valued at $200,000 about $190 a year.

In 2005, Ascension voters approved a similar tax measure that funded the building of five schools in four years. Prairieville and Pecan Grove primaries opened in August 2008, and Spanish Lake, Lakeside and Central primaries this school year. The School Board also broke ground on a sixth primary school in Sorrento last month; it was funded by a post-hurricane spike in sales tax revenue.

After their 2006 on-site accreditation review, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools noted the disparity in these newer schools and some of the system’s older campuses. Updating older electrical systems to accommodate present-day technology was one of several recommendations SACS made.