Lafourche achievement grade up slightly

As far as district performance is concerned, and as gauged by standardized test results, Lafourche Parish’s public schools improved between 2009-10 and 2010-11, but the district did not enjoy the same level of improvement it established in previous years.

Lafourche Parish finished last year with a 95.9 District Performance Score, up from 94.4 in 2009-10. Its improvement was exactly one-half the average annual growth of 3 from spring 2006 through fall 2010.

“We’re ahead of the state average,” Lafourche District spokesman Floyd Benoit said. “We’re not where we want to be, but we keep improving every year.”

DPS and School Performance Scores (SPS), on an individual level, are calculated with a formula that relies heavily on standardized test scores but also includes attendance (from K-6th), dropouts (middle school) and graduation index (high school).

Three of the parish’s 28 public schools met the state-scheduled SPS annual growth target: Bayou Blue Elementary (90, up from 81.4); East Thibodaux Middle (84.8, up from 79.2); and Sixth Ward Middle (110.4, up from 107.2).

The Department of Education began grading the institutions that grade children this year, and the majority of Lafourche’s schools were tabbed as average.

Sixth Ward Middle was one of four schools to score a B, which indicates an SPS that falls between 105 and 119.9. Bayou Boeuf Elementary scored 117.6, South Lafourche High School scored 110.4, and Chackbay Elementary scored 109.5.

No school scored higher than Bayou Boeuf Elementary, which also led last year with 120.7.

Twenty-five percent of the parish’s schools were slapped with Ds (an SPS between 65 and 89.9): Raceland Middle (75.3), W.S. Lafargue Elementary (81.1), Raceland Lower Elementary (82.9), Bayou Blue Middle (83.8), East Thibodaux Middle (84.8), Raceland Upper Elementary (85.7), and West Thibodaux Middle (87.6).

No school scored lower than Raceland Middle, which has now been the district’s lowest-performing school for four consecutive years.

Schools that dip below an SPS of 60 are placed on the state’s “Academically Unacceptable Schools” list and are mandated to introduce performance-enhancing programs each year they are labeled as such.

In Lafourche, students who score poorly on the state exams are given the opportunity to participate in two voluntary tutoring programs throughout the parish, either after school or during the summer.

“Our summer school results are phenomenal,” Benoit said. “If we have 18 percent that failed one part of the iLEAP test and they go to summer school, out of that 18 percent, we’ll get like 80 percent of those to pass.”

Career Magnet Center status

District staffers will meet with representatives from Lafourche’s business community Dec. 7 to start discussing the preliminary curriculum that will be introduced in its proposed career center.

Earlier this year, the school board authorized the superintendent to sign a purchase agreement worth $572,400 for 21.6 acres of land on La. Highway 308 in Lockport, where it plans to construct its Vocational/Career Center.

The project is being financed with a bond taken out against 17 mills of property tax parish voters agreed to in 2007.

The district plans to build a facility between 40,000 and 45,000 square feet, according to Evan Plaisance, land and facilities manager.

The center, which would function in partnership with the business community, will be constructed to absorb changes in curriculum as business leaders identify lulls in needed workforce, but next month’s meeting should outline a starting point, Benoit said.

“The career center is going to be a wonderful thing in that we can start identifying students who have the ability but do not have the desire to go to college,” Benoit said. “Some people just want to be in the blue-collar fields.”

The career center would not overlap with the parish’s vocational centers at its high schools, which teach welding and carpentry, among other trades.

Instead, it could offer programs for training in the medical field and help students attain the hyper-technical skills necessary to become boat captains in a parish that offers proximity to offshore oil exploration and is entrenched in the service industry.

It would allow students to focus on field-specific training, grant certain types of certification in studied fields and offer the value of actual experience, Benoit said.

Most importantly, however, it will give the parish’s youth another option. Some students don’t have the personality for college or business executive moxie, and the career center aims to provide them with an avenue toward high-paying jobs.

“Most every parent has a desire for their child to go to college,” Benoit said. “So they take off and go to college, and you know the results: some of them graduate, some of them end up not graduating and some of them graduate and they end up in a field they really don’t like.”

New facility complete, another pending

Earlier this year, the district completed a three-year project that was developed to cut down on the danger and tropical weather conditions students at Thibodaux Elementary faced every time they stepped out to lunch.

The new facility, 45,000 square feet in size, includes classrooms and a cafeteria, which was much needed. Prior to the building’s opening, students had to cross Tetreau Street and East Seventh Street to get to the cafeteria at East Thibodaux Middle.

Now, on the opposite end of the parish, officials are working to construct a new, similarly sized building for Larose Upper Elementary. Still in the preliminary design phase, the proposed school would include 23 classrooms and six office spaces, Plaisance said.

The land and facilities manager did not have an estimate for the amount of square footage, but he said it should be about the same size as the parish’s newest addition.

The existing facility was designed without weep holes, which are typically located at the base of the wall and serve to allow built-up moisture to escape the interior, Plaisance said. “After years of not letting that moisture out, the moisture built up between the brick wall and the interior wall, causing the steel (frame) to rust and decay.”

After the board approves the preliminary design, the project will be released for bid. Plaisance said the district could break ground on a new building next summer.