BCA Charter School set to open Aug. 6

The Lafourche Parish School Board approved Bayou Community Academy Charter School’s application last Monday, setting the stage for the school to begin session on Aug. 6.

The Type I charter school application was approved 13-0, a unanimous vote with two board members absent. Greg Stall had a meeting and Julie Breaux was out of town, and neither attended specially scheduled board meeting.

“This has been a very amicable partnership not often seen in other districts,” board member Ronald Pere said of the planning process. “This one has been exceptional.”

Bill Crawford, president of the BCA board of directors, spoke briefly to the school board, outlining the basic details of an enormous application the two sides collectively shaped over the past five months.

BCA enrollment will be open to all Lafourche Parish students and can accept up to 250 students its first year, he said.

The charter school will be governed by its own board, working in conjunction with LPSB.

Crawford lauded the benefits of charter schools, which give parents a choice as to which school their children will attend. BCA will decrease amount of students who are home-schooled, at least 400, he said, “and these are the ones we know about.”

The charter school’s board president said its emphasis on learning core facts in conjunction with “learning how to learn,” and its high expectations on student performance compare favorably to schools in both the public and private systems.

“Again, we’re not trying to say, ‘We’re better, you’re worse.’ We’re just saying, ‘We’re focused. We believe in what we’re doing,'” Crawford said outside of the meeting. “We’re going to expect high performance from our teachers, high participation from our parents and the children, we believe, will excel when they get those two elements put together.”

BCA students must maintain a 2.4 grade point average. If a student is known to be struggling, the problem-solving School Building Level Committee will intervene and can offer up to a one-year grace period after a student finishes the year below 2.4 if it feels extenuating circumstances led to the poor performance.

Crawford defined the charter school as a college preparatory school with an emphasis on humanities-based education.

“Humanities-based education is an education where the child is reading good or great or classical literature, discussing the meaning in class, learning their grammar, their vocabulary and reasoning skills engaged with great thinkers,” he said. “That’s one element of it. The other element is the core knowledge sequence, which is very focused on ‘these are the foundational facts.’ This is the cultural literacy you need to achieve to succeed in our society.”

After the meeting, Pere said charter schools are sprouting up nationwide because parents don’t want to be restricted to sending their children to school in one district, whether it is due to demographics or school quality.

The federally funded charter school will be in the public system, and therefore, free to attend.

Should BCA not meet its enrollment numbers, it could accept students from neighboring parishes – Assumption, Terrebonne and St. James – provided LPSB signs a Memorandum of Understanding with the parish’s school board.

Crawford said BCA expects to meet its enrollment threshold of 210 students in its first year.

“We expect the interest level to be high,” said Crawford, who added that BCA has identified 100 students who it expects will register. “We really expect the enrollment to be pushed into the lottery. We don’t foresee there being any chance of us not matching or exceeding enrollment estimates.”

If BCA exceeds enrollment, it will initiate a lottery system. “This is not first come, first serve,” Crawford said.

Parents looking for more information, or groups that would like Crawford to speak at one of their engagements can contact him at bcainc@bellsouth.net.

The Bayou Community Academy Charter School is scheduled to open Aug. 6 in the original Thibodaux Elementary building. The school has been promised a plot of land near the intersection of Percy Brown Road and Ardoyne Street in Thibodaux for a future relocation. ERIC BESSON