St. Mary board adopts new school zones

CENTERVILLE — The St. Mary Parish School Board approved redistricting plans for M.D. Shannon and J.A. Hernandez elementary students during its monthly meeting at the Central Office Complex.

The new plan affects only those two schools, which will close at this school year’s end.

For Shannon students, Everett Street serves as a boundary line dictating where students will attend the 2016-17 school year . Students living on and north of Everett Street will attend M.E. Norman Elementary.

Students living south of Everett Street will attend Wyandotte Elementary.

Boundary lines for Hernandez students going to W.P. Foster Elementary are not as clear cut as the parish’s east side dividing lines.

In the current Hernandez-zoned area, Willow Street between U.S. 90 and Bayou Teche serves as the center line for dividing the students. Students will be assigned to Foster living in the following areas:

—South of Willow Street, which includes the south side of Willow Street.

—North of Willow Street after crossing Bayou Teche.

— North of Iberia Street stopping east of Third Street.

—North of Bayou Teche.

Students assigned to LaGrange Elementary live on the north side and north of Willow Street.

Mike Hefner of Geographic Planning and Demographic Services in Lafayette provided redistricting services for the school board.

Next school year, there will be two separate buses traveling on Willow Street to pick up children going to both LaGrange and Foster. Because Willow Street is a major road, Hefner did not want students crossing the street.

Before meeting with the board, Hefner met with central office senior staff members Tuesday to go over four redistricting scenarios to make sure Hefner was not missing anything from a staff standpoint.

If consolidation takes place again, board member Kenny Alfred said he would appreciate more time to deliberate matters instead of having to make quick decisions.

Hefner held himself accountable for a quick turnaround meeting with senior personnel. He was aware of the staff’s urgent desire to begin the restructuring process and get the information to affected parties as soon as possible.

With the school district’s open desegregation case, board attorney Eric Duplessis said the board did not have to seek court approval for consolidation.

Most school systems in similar situations are required to seek approval. But St. Mary has a provision in its consent decree, Hefner said. Hefner has a law degree.

In Hefner’s presentation, he pointed out the racial makeup for schools in the consolidation . Although it’s not required by the consent decree, he said, his goal was to further desegregate schools.

Based on October 2015 school demographic information, Hefner calculated that Wyandotte would have an enrollment that’s 46.3-percent white and 33.3 percent black next year. At Norman, the percentage of white students would be 49.5 percent and black students, 32.3 percent.

At Foster, the white students will account for 23.4 percent of the enrollment and blacks 71.7 percent.

The percentage of white students at LaGrange will be around 20.8 and 72.8 for black students.

Other racial groups are not considered in the desegregation case for St. Mary Parish.

“To me, it’s implied that if you do consolidation, you can further desegregate school systems. Then you should do so,” Hefner said. “And that’s the approach that I take.”

He was successful in achieving that goal for Morgan City students. But in Franklin, he was only able to eliminate one racially identifiable school.

“I looked at a number of identifiable configurations and it wasn’t enough to get the African-American population down to 57 percent or below,” he said.