Kentwood High called safe

• By DAVID J. MITCHELL
• Advocate Florida parishes bureau
• Published: May 15, 2008 - Page: 5B - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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AMITE — Negotiations in a Tangipahoa Parish school desegregation case have raised worries about the future of Kentwood High School, a historic building built by a Depression-era jobs and civic improvement program.

But attorneys on both sides of the litigation and some of those who initially raised those concerns now say that closure or even the razing of the Kentwood High building is not being discussed, as some had feared a little more than a week ago.

Plaintiffs’ attorney Nelson Taylor said Friday he was surprised to hear about concerns raised the previous week before the School Board.

He said closing Kentwood High is not something his side in the school desegregation case is pursuing. But Taylor did say that the School Board has presented draft proposals that include building as many as four new schools.

Details of where those schools would be built have not been discussed, he said.

Taylor helps represent the class of black public school students and their parents who are the plaintiffs in the suit dating from 1965.
On Monday, Kentwood High teacher Ann Trappey said she learned at a town meeting May 5 in Kentwood that there was a possibility the old building could be razed and replaced with a new Kentwood High on the same site.

Without actually airing that specific allegation May 6, Trappey raised the alarm for the board, noting the Works Progress Administration built the school in 1940 with hand-cleaned bricks from a school that burned in 1938.

She noted the building’s fine architectural details, sturdiness in storms and importance to Kentwood.

“I’m here just to ask you to save our building, save our school. Kentwood needs Kentwood High School,” Trappey said then. Another school backer also said the school could be closed.

Since that meeting, Trappey has been told the plan to raze the school will not happen, she said Monday.

She would not say who gave her that information.

But attorney Charles Patin Jr., the School Board’s lead attorney in the case, said closing Kentwood High School “is not an option I’m considering.”

“It’s not on my agenda,” Patin said.