Kenner's City Council is fighting to keep Washington Elementary School open.
The 80-year-old school has a history as being a traditionally African-American elementary school.
With that in mind, the City Council is asking the Jefferson Parish School Board to keep Washington open and to renovate the campus.
According to the Times-Picayune/New Orleans Advocate Washington is slated to be closed. The student body will be sent to Bunche Elementary in Metairie, also a historic school which has a background as a educational facility for African-Americans.
The closing of Washington and three other schools is part of a consolidation plan by Jefferson Parish Schools Superintendent Cade Brumley.
The School Board will consider implimenting the plan at their next board meeting Wednesday night.
The plan has run afoul of many in South Kenner.
They say the school is the anchor of Kenner's African-American community.
In their efforts to head off the closure the City Council has adopted two resolutions recognizing Washington's historic importance and calling on the School Board to re-invest, not close, the campus.
The proposed closures are part of a top-down rehabilitation program.
Proponents say its needed to better manage aging school facilities which are more than 50-years old.
Since Washington was built 80-years ago, it's among the oldest facilities targeted for closure.
Those supporting closure point to a report stating a consultants reports calling for the structure to be torn down and completely replaced.
Similar proposed closures are aimed at the communities of Gretna and Westwego, planning to close four schools there and convert others pre-K-through-5th grade into pre-k-through-8th grade.
But School Board member Simeon Dickerson, who's district includes Washington, says the school is a symbol of the region in the time before desegretation, when a school for African-Americans was a covet prize, and the community built up around it.
Kenner City Councilmember Gregory Carroll said the school operated before desegretation and was a point of pride for the community that surrounds it.
Despite support for Washington and the other schools targeted for closure, School Board President Brumley says the consolidation would allow the District to declare the properties as surplus, sell them off, and pump the money into the remaining schools needing renovations.