By Kyle Roberts
RUSTON, La. — Tuesday night’s Lincoln Parish School Board meeting was focused in large part on the results of a six-month school reconfiguration study conducted by Hunt, Guillot & Associates with efforts to reduce the number of times a student transitions schools in Ruston being one of the key factors.
As of right now, a student who starts Pre-Kindergarten at the Lincoln Parish Early Childhood Center and graduates from Ruston High will have transitioned through a minimum of six separate schools throughout the course of their education.
HGA’s study has now proposed a remedy that the board may take up for a vote in the near future for the first of possibly two different phases. At the board meeting, Trotter Hunt reviewed several scenarios with various configurations, but those were not recommended due to factors including closing schools in neighborhoods with strong community ties or capacity challenges at various campuses.
The first phase of the recommended proposal would take the four elementary schools in Ruston (Glen View, Cypress Springs, Hillcrest and Ruston Elementary) and repurpose them to PreK through fifth grade, meaning students will now go for seven years at the same school before transitioning to I.A. Lewis for sixth grade.
The LPECC building would also be converted into the main office for the Lincoln Parish School Board, and the bus barn currently located at Ruston Junior High will be moved there, as well.
No changes will be made to schools in Choudrant, Dubach or Simsboro.
“(This study) is part of what we told the community we would do when we passed the $17.5 million bond measure this past year,” LPSB Superintendent Ricky Durrett said. “We want to make sure this is equal access for everybody, because if you have four elementary schools (in Ruston) just like at Simsboro, Dubach and Choudrant, we’re going to offer all the same things at every school no matter what.”
Students transitioning between multiple schools is heavily weighted as the need for this proposal. LPSB Chief Academic Officer Emily Howell spoke about the challenges students face when they are moving through so many schools.
“A study from 2012 showed that a single school change could be the equivalent of a setback of more than 10 instructional days,” Howell said. “That really struck me when I considered that it’s compounded over five transitions in our city school system and what that could mean for kids. And another study from 2018 in Texas showed that students enrolled in configurations with the least amount of transitions outperformed their counterparts.”
Each school would also have space for the Boys and Girls Club of North Louisiana to implement after school activities, as well.
Durrett also added that this would need to be voted on by the school board members before the end of this calendar year if the plan is to start phase one in the 2026-27 school year.
“We would need to give enough time for the teachers, administrators and staff to figure out the logistics of everything,” Durrett said. “Our goal would be to move as few techers as possible. And there would be some maintenance at the schools that would need to be done just to get it back to ready for PreK – 5. We’ll also have to redo bus routes, but I think that’s a huge advantage of this — you can start school later at the elementary schools because you’re running a closer route.”
For LPSB President Gregg Phillips, bringing the community into the process will be important as the board decides when to bring this to a vote.
“First of all, I want to thank HGA for their work on putting this study together,” Phillips said in a text to the LPJ. “As a board, we felt it would be very healthy to get an outside perspective on what are the top needs we as a community have with regards to our school facilities and process of how we do ‘school.’ The results of that study drove this plan that was presented to the board for consideration. The next thing we as a board and a district need to do is to go back and listen to the community, because this change will definitely have an effect. We need to know if the public feels that the changes proposed will make the education experience overall better for the students and families of Ruston.”
LPSB Vice President Dr. Danielle Williams (District 1) was in agreement about the importance of getting community feedback.
“I believe our public needs to be involved in the decision making,” Williams said. “(During the survey), I called on the former superintenent in Ascension Parish, David Alexander. We met with the group, and he made a recommendation of a demographer because of Lincoln Parish’s unitary status. One of the things he talked about is when you address the socioeconomic status, then the racial part is going to take care of itself. So I think that before we even vote on it, we just need to involve the public and get their feedback and find out what direction we want to take it into the future.”
An immediate part of gathering community feedback will be another public survey that will be coming out from the school board in the coming days.
“We are requesting that the public please give us feedback,” Phillips said. “So be on the lookout for this, and let us know how if you feel this plan would be better for the students.”
The second phase of the plan was a more high level look at what could be done in the future, including the possibility of either building new school campuses or doing major overhauls to the current schools. Phillips was quick to point out that this was not the same plan as the one presented in the 2023 bond measure vote that failed.
“As it was explained, this is just a step in the process toward the long term solution,” Phillips said. “That solution is still not fully developed as I understand it. There will be further study into the idea of building one or possibly two new elementary schools… where those would be located, and how we can pay for them. What I can say is that we are not considering reviving the plan that was defeated a couple of years ago.”
HGA partnered with FLO Analytics to conduct the survey. A total of 1,632 people filled it out, with 75 percent of those reported having children currently enrolled in the Lincoln Parish School System.
