While making a pitch today for a penny sales tax renewal to fund East Baton Rouge Parish Schools over the next decade, superintendent Warren Drake defended the work his administration has done in recent years to improve education in the portion of the parish that would comprise the proposed city of St. George.
“We’ve done a great job in the southeast part of Baton Rouge,” Drake said during his address to the Baton Rouge Press Club this afternoon. “We’ve changed leadership there. We’ve added programming there. I think we’ve done a lot.”
Drake pointed out that the system has added two new schools in the St. George area, including a charter school run by BASIS, one of the top-performing charter school operators in the country. He also has met regularly with residents and community leaders from that part of the parish in an attempt to address their concerns.
“We’ve added magnet programming at two of our middle schools, we added classroom buildings,” he said. “We’ve done a great job.”
Organizers of the effort to incorporate a separate city and school district, which failed in 2015, apparently do not agree. They filed paperwork late last week to again launch a petition drive to get a St. George incorporation measure on a fall ballot.
In a video on their Facebook page, they explain their effort was originally borne out of frustration with the parish school system, and that several years later things haven’t improved. “Unfortunately … our schools continue to fail,” the video says.
Drake told the Press Club several of the capital improvement projects that would be funded by the $935 million tax renewal would make the system more efficient by consolidating certain schools, closing aging facilities and building new, state-of-the art schools. But those plans and projects would benefit students and families in all areas of the parish—not just St. George, he noted.
“We’re not trying to appease anyone or trying to stop them from doing something,” he said. “We’re taking care of all of our kids, wherever they are. We don’t do something to prevent something else from happening.”
Drake said he is concerned about the fate of between 1,000 and 1,500 students, who live in the proposed city of St. George but attend magnet schools like Baton Rouge Magnet High or Glasgow Middle Magnet that are inside Baton Rouge city limits.
“I would hate for those kids to lose that opportunity,” he said.
As for the proposed tax renewal, Drake said he is optimistic it will pass, given prior support of the school system at the ballot. But he says the system is trying to get the word out that the 10-year, one-penny tax is a renewal that will be divided into three separate ballot propositions—one to fund facilities and technology, including 23 new construction or renovations projects; one tied to discipline and truancy improvements; and, one to maintain current employee compensation levels.
