By Kyle Roberts
Parents heading to Ruston Junior High School this year will find a new carline route, a new entrance and, school officials hope, a little more patience behind the wheel.
With bridge work and Buc-ee’s construction narrowing roads across Ruston, Lincoln Parish School Board Superintendent John Young said the junior high is the district’s biggest pressure point for morning drop-off and afternoon pickup.
“I hope everybody can be a little bit more patient with everybody else right now,” Young said. “We’re in it for the long haul.”
Construction has reduced the Interstate 20 service road in front of the school to a single lane with no shoulder, Young said, leaving the district one workable option — routing the carline through Tarbutton Road as opposed to Woodward Ave.
“There is not a shoulder for those cars to get off on,” Young said of Woodward. “If that backs up in our car line, an emergency vehicle may not be able to get through. It just chokes traffic.”
Drivers should now approach the school from Tarbutton Road, either from the north by way of Kentucky, or by crossing the Exit 83 bridge from the south. The entrance behind and to the east of the Lincoln Parish STEM Center is closed, which is the Woodward Avenue entrance families have used in the mornings for years.
Red “CARLINE” signs will guide drivers from Tarbutton Road onto the school access road, according to procedures the school distributed to parents. All vehicles then turn left into the semicircle carline, drop off students only in the designated area, and turn right back onto the access road to exit.
Three district employees will direct traffic, Young said. Ruston police will assist when officers are available, and the signal at the carline intersection may be switched to a blinking red light at the department’s discretion. The same route applies to both drop-off and pickup.
Bell times also shift about five minutes later this year. The carline opens and the earliest buses arrive at 7:30 a.m., instruction begins at 8 a.m., and dismissal is 3:27 p.m.
Young said the arrangement is for the foreseeable future.
“With the construction in front of us, this is how we’ll operate,” Young said. “I would say until we can get two lanes of traffic on the service road.”
At Ruston High, the biggest adjustment is for drivers accustomed to turning left on the service road near Starbucks to head back east. Lincoln Parish Transportation Supervisor Doc Hoefler said district buses will avoid that corridor altogether.
“For buses, we’re going to avoid going in that area going to and from Ruston Junior High to Ruston High,” Hoefler said. “Once we’ve dropped off the kids, we’re going to end up going a different way, going to Alabama to get to each school.”
Buses leaving Ruston High will turn left onto Bearcat Drive, heading west, then turn right and work back to Alabama behind the intramural fields. Hoefler said he has asked drivers to avoid the Cooktown bridge where possible, though about eight buses cannot — five special education buses and three regular routes.
Young urged parents to consider the same detour rather than the route that looks shorter on a map.
Glen View Elementary’s carline procedures are unchanged, Young said, but the road leading to it is tighter. One lane has been removed and the former turn lane — the one drivers used to reach Hobby Lobby and Dairy Queen — is now a travel lane, with the single-lane stretch running to Bittersweet.
Across all three schools, Young said he gave the same message to bus drivers at a professional development session and to parents across the parish: build in extra time and extend some grace.
“Our students are our most precious cargo,” Young said. “Law enforcement asked me to reiterate that you need to leave home a little bit earlier than what you normally have, even if it’s five or 10 minutes earlier.”
He encouraged families with bus riders to use the bus locator on the Lincoln Parish Schools app, which shows a bus’s location close to real time.
The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development posts construction updates on its Facebook page. Young said a DOTD flyer released last week listed late 2029 as the estimated completion date for the Cooktown bridge construction, though Ruston Mayor Ronny Walker recently said it could be in 2028.
