Tomorrow night, the Jefferson Parish School Board will vote on a plan that would close and/or consolidate several schools. The district's superintendent says this plan will push the district to "build a better future" for its students.
"Change is always difficult, and one of the things that we want to make everyone aware of that this is something that wasn't well or that we didn't look at all possible options before we made any final decisions," Dr. James Gray, superintendent of Jefferson Parish Schools, told WWL's Tommy Tucker. "Although there is going to be a pain point that many people are going to have to go through because of their attachments to their schools, the bigger piece is the fact that we have to provide quality education to our kids on a very continuous basis."
Dr. Gray said the best way to do that is for him and the school board to take action now by closing aging schools and reduce the district's teacher shortage.
"We had a high of 160 teacher vacancies this year," Dr. Gray said. "We are currently at around 140. When you talk to parents and when you talk to students, one of the things that constantly comes up is: how can we resolve our teacher shortage issue?"
[shortcode-inline-related expand="1" link="/wwl/news/local/jp-school-leaders-seek-to-right-size-amid-enrollment-drop" headline="Jefferson Parish school leaders seek to "right-size" district amid enrollment drop" image="/media-library/image.jpg?id=64235150"]Dr. Gray says closing the district's oldest campuses will help the district provide safe and orderly learning opportunities to students--opportunities he says they're not getting now because in some buildings, classes are disrupted by leaking pipes or sewerage problems.
"By us closing down some of our older buildings, it puts us in a position to have kids in better facilities, but it also provides an opportunity for us to do long-range planning for future school builds," Dr. Gray said. "We have to still try to figure out how we make a better future for our kids, not only for our kids that are in the buildings today but what's going to be occurring five years from now (or) 10 years from now."
Dr. Gray says while he hopes the school board will adopt the plan, he admits nothing is guaranteed.
"We have the board that has to vote on this tomorrow night, so anything can happen between now and then," Dr. Gray said, referring to Wednesday night's meeting. "I support the plan. I think it's something that has to happen in order for us to move forward. If it does not happen, it just creates more complications for us in the future that we're going to have to contend with."
The Jefferson Parish School Board will vote on the plans to close and consolidate schools during its April regular meeting. That meeting is scheduled for 6 p.m. Wednesday at the JPSB Administrative Building in Harvey.
