Labon "Jake" Porche Jr.
February 17, 2009
Esther Marie LeBoeuf LeCompte
February 19, 2009
Grand Caillou Elementary School students could move next school year, but where they’ll attend class is still unclear.
Terrebonne Parish School Superintendent Philip Martin is expected to present information on the feasibility of two leading suggestions at today’s committee meeting.
One idea favored by school board and committee member Roger Dale Dehart is to move Grand Caillou Elementary students to Dularge Middle and Elementary schools.
He claimed seven to nine classes could be moved to the middle school, and the elementary school has “a little space.”
“I think it’s doable,” Dehart said at last Wednesday’s committee meeting. “It wouldn’t interrupt anything at the middle school. The test scores at Dularge Middle and Dularge Elementary are very good.”
From Grand Caillou Elementary, Dularge Middle is over 14 miles away, and Dularge Elementary is about 15 miles away.
The other plan, which was advocated by Martin but thoroughly rejected by the Dulac residents, is to place the elementary students at Grand Caillou Middle and turn it into a kindergarten through sixth grade school. Seventh and eighth graders would be sent to Oaklawn Junior High School.
Residents said they did not want their kids at Oaklawn for several reasons, beginning with the fact that Oaklawn is in school choice.
Oaklawn met the state’s 60 percent School Performance Score, but it failed to meet the state’s Adequate Yearly Progress requirements because last spring a subgroup of students failed a section of the Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test for the second straight year.
Oaklawn’s 2007-08 School Performance Score was 70.1, while Grand Caillou Middle’s SPS was 76.1.
“I’m not getting a warm, fuzzy feeling about the Oaklawn idea,” Martin said. “It’s not off the table, but obviously no one jumped up and down saying they wanted to do that.”
Residents asked about placing modular buildings on the Grand Caillou Middle School campus, about 2.5 miles up the bayou, to house the elementary students.
Martin insisted that would be problematic for two reasons. First, the school system could not get enough modulars before next school year begins due to the bidding process. Second, the buildings would have to be raised to an elevation 13 feet above sea level.
Terrebonne Parish Councilman Clayton Voisin, also a committee member, insisted students could remain at Grand Caillou Elementary because the levee behind the school was being raised.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is starting a $30 million project on the levees surrounding Lake Boudreaux, which flooded the school in September.
“I went to this school. My parents went to this school. To even think that my grandkids would have to be bused someplace else is inconceivable,” Voisin said. “If you choose to open this school in August, it will have the best hurricane protection it has ever had because we’re going to have an eight- to 10-foot levee back that.”
Voisin also said the Corps will have the levee completed by July 1. While Martin was hopeful, he was not convinced the levee could be done that quickly.
“This is the first time I heard about the levee,” Martin said. “I never heard a politician say by July you’re going to have a levee. That’s very optimistic. I hope they’re right. That would make our job a lot easier.”
Martin has said that he prefers not to return students to Grand Caillou Elementary in August.
The largest building on campus, a two-story brick structure that housed the library, computer lab and 10 classrooms, is unusable, according to Martin.
“Condemned is probably not the right word. A structural engineer said don’t put kids in there as a classroom setting,” he explained
Students and teachers are “doubled up” – two classes per room – in about 20 other classrooms on campus.
“We’re making do right now because that’s the best option we have right now,” Martin said. “That’s not something we want to do for 182 days next (school) year. We’re just buying time until we either a) fix this school, or b) build another school.”
“Even without hurricanes, the structural integrity of the biggest building on campus has been compromised by the storm,” he added. “We haven’t determined what it’s going to take to fix and repair that. I’m not willing to speculate what it’s going to take to fix that building, and the conclusion may be it can’t be fixed.
Whatever recommendations emerge from the committee on Grand Caillou Elementary School will be forwarded to the school board’s Building and Sites Committee.
All Committee to Study Grand Caillou Elementary School meetings will be held on Wednesdays through March 25 at the Terrebonne Parish Parks and Recreation Gym, 106 Recreation Drive, in Dulac. Next week, it will be held on Thursday, Feb. 26, instead of Wednesday.
Grand Caillou Elementary School students will likely attend a different school in Terrebonne Parish. A committee studying options for alternative sites will meet today in Dulac. * Photo by KEYON K. JEFF
