Students react after Jefferson Parish School Board votes to close several schools

JEFFERSON PARISH (WVUE) - In the aftermath of a crucial Jefferson Parish School Board vote that will allow for the closure and merger of several public schools, Grace King High sophomore Jasmin Sevilla says it is still hard grasping her reality.

“(The vote) hurt because I have a lot of friends,” Sevilla said. “I thought and everybody else thought it would be a different outcome. I didn’t think our school would be closed down.”

Sevilla was one of many students who went to Wednesday’s meeting to voice their opposition to the consolidation plan, which initially called for eight schools to close as a result of the district-wide teacher shortage and dwindling enrollment numbers.

A Grace King High student says a portion of her public comments in Spanish, stressing that the proposed closure of her school would hurt non-English speaking families.

Officials are considering the closure and splitting the student body among other institutions. @FOX8NOLA pic.twitter.com/4q48OIxC99

— Andrés Fuentes (@news_fuentes) April 5, 2023

As of now, the district has 140 teacher vacancies. In total, 13% of the district’s nearly 47,000 students will be affected by the consolidation.

Here is a look at the plan, which will take place in the 2023-2024 school year:

  • Grace King High School students will be absorbed into Bonnabel High School and Riverdale High School
  • Gretna Middle School students will be absorbed into Marrero Middle School and Livaudais Middle School
  • Helen Cox High School students will be absorbed into John Ehret High School, LW Higgins High School, and West Jefferson High School
  • Joshua Butler Elementary students will be absorbed into Judge Lionel Collins Elementary, Isaac Joseph Elementary, and Truman School
  • Mildred Harris Elementary students will be absorbed into Cherbonnier Elementary and Emmett Gilbert Elementary
  • Washington Elementary students will be absorbed into Bunche Elementary
  • St. Ville Elementary students will be absorbed into Woodmere Elementary while a new school is being built at the current St. Ville site. Once the new school construction at St. Ville’s current site is completed, a new St. Ville Elementary will open. School lines will be redrawn then to include the St. Ville Elementary, Woodmere Elementary, Shirley Johnson Gretna Park Elementary, and George Cox Elementary campuses.

Two schools will relocate their campuses and students:

  • Haynes Academy will relocate to the Grace King High School site
  • Thomas Jefferson Academy will relocate to the Gretna Middle School site One school will expand to a PK-8 school:
  • C.T. Janet Elementary (currently PK-5)

School board officials say the consolidation plan has been in the works for a number of years now, but multiple highly active hurricane seasons and COVID-19 kept delaying it from going forward.

School board president Ralph Brandt says the plan will put better educators into fuller classrooms.

“Hopefully what this will do for us is give us the ability to take the teachers from the schools that are being consolidated and move those teachers to classrooms that are currently without full-time certified teachers,” Brandt said.

And with Jefferson Parish School District being one of the state’s largest and most culturally diverse school districts, Brandt says language services for students and families will continue through the changes.

“The students who are in the ELL classes right now and the ESL, they will be still getting those services in the new school that they go to,” he said. “No child will be denied services because of this move.”

That does little to calm Sevilla, whose Honduran family felt like they had a safe haven at Grace King High. Now, they wait to see if she’s assigned to either Bonnable High or Riverdale.

And the sophomore worries what that might do to her academics and her dreams of being a nurse.

“Before I found out that this whole thing was going to happen, I had planned on graduating a year earlier. I had already talked to my counselor this year. I only needed to take seven classes to graduate,” Sevilla said. “Hearing that got me upset because I already had my pathway to graduate and it felt like (they said) ‘Nope. I’m taking it. Figure it out.’”

Sevilla and many of her fellow classmates rallied at Wednesday’s board meeting, hoping to persuade officials to see things from their perspective. Issues were brought up about students’ mental health due to the dramatic changes, transportation issues and the financial strain of new uniforms.

Board members managed to discuss potentially rescheduling the vote on the consolidation plan until next year but it was shot down when it went to a vote.

Grace King High senior Gabriel Herevia says he can’t imagine how students like him, who relied heavily on ESL programs, would do at different schools.

He credits the teachers and community at Grace King High for getting him far through high school and giving him hope for Delgado Community College and, eventually, LSU.

“I don’t feel proud or nothing because I want the other people in the school to have the same experience in school. I feel weird just knowing I am one of the last people to graduate,” Herevia said.

See a spelling or grammar error in our story? Click Here to report it. Please include the headline.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7p7vXcaOirpVjsLC5jmtna2tfZYFwfJZoqq2tlJq7tb%2BMq5yam6RirqfAxKtko52Wm7Kzv86nZKmZop7AqXnSnJ%2Bop5xir7Ct0Z1kr6ekmsBur8uoqp5lo5rDpr7ApWSsm5ikvK2%2Fjg%3D%3D