Officials from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System are holding a strategy session this morning to try to figure out how to get the parish’s schools reopened as quickly as possible.
With thousands of students displaced and thousands more of the system’s teachers and employees also adversely affected, EBR Schools Superintendent Warren Drake says it will be a challenge. But he’d like to try to reopen as soon as Monday if possible.
While Drake concedes that goal is extremely ambitious given the devastation, he believes it’s important to move forward as aggressively as possible so school children can have a safe place and return to some semblance of normalcy.
The biggest challenges officials are trying to address right now include finding additional space to house students from the six schools that were flooded—and won’t be able to reopen this year—and trying to get system employees back to work.
Approximately one-third of the system’s faculty and staffers have been displaced by flooding. Drake is hoping to hold a “dry run” Friday at parish schools with faculty and staff to see who is able to come to work, and how each school can regroup given the realities of its limited resources.
In terms of finding space for students of the six flooded schools, Drake says several possibilities are under consideration. Among them: combining schools, utilizing facilities on the campus of Jimmy Swaggart World Ministries, and possibly even using the old Istrouma High School, which was set to go out to bid next month for a massive renovation.
Drake says he’d prefer not to have to use Istrouma if possible and would like to move forward with the planned renovation, but at this point all options are on the table.
In surveying damage to the system’s assets over the past couple of days, Drake says the situation in some respects is not as bad as initially feared. Many of the system’s buses, which were at home with their drivers, did not flood. Spare buses at the system’s Choctaw Drive facility also appear to be undamaged. Drake says water only rose to the rim of the buses’ wheels so they should be operational.
The facilities of the Office of Child Nutrition also weathered the storm without any flood damage so food service can resume without problems once schools reopen.
—Stephanie Riegel
