After recently clearing its final major hurdle when Gov. Bobby Jindal signed off on a three-year, no-cost lease, a long-awaited truancy center to help boost school attendance and reduce juvenile crime is on schedule to open its doors this fall, officials announced this afternoon. The Family and Youth Service Center of East Baton Rouge will be housed in the former site of the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired at 1120 Government St. The city-parish, East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, EBR Sheriff’s Office and EBR District Attorney’s Office are each committing $100,000 per year toward the center’s operations, for three years. The Wilson Foundation, a Baton Rouge-based nonprofit, is also committing $100,000 to be spent on technology during the center’s inaugural year. “We came together a number of years ago and began to deal with this pressing issue,” says Mayor Kip Holden. “A one-stop truancy center emerged as the primary tool. With the help of the governor’s office, the truancy center is about to become a reality. It is a phase in a long process that together we feel we can make our neighborhoods safer.” District Attorney Hillar Moore III says a lot of work remains ahead for the partners as they work together to address a situation that has arisen over time and cannot be solved overnight. The truancy center project began back in 2008, when Holden, Moore, former school board Superintendent John Dilworth, Sheriff Sid Gautreaux and former Chief of Police Jeff LeDuff began working together to address the correlation between high dropout rates and juvenile crime. Check out a Business Report story from early 2011 on the partners’ vision for the truancy center here.
Editor’s note: This story has been changed since its original publication.
