Shira Lang, 42, says her boys are athletes who have become comfortable with their schools, the sports programs and their classmates. But the new attendance zones would send them elsewhere.
"It's killing not only them but me as well because now they will have to go a lot further than we currently are to school with kids they have no idea about or how the athletics works, when they're currently already into the system," Lang told the School Board on Tuesday.
Lang is among a group of parents in the Galvez area who are recent vocal critics of the latest version of the proposed attendance maps. They live in the large Keystone of Galvez neighborhood, which includes hundreds of homes. A handful of streets south of Devall Road in the neighborhood would change from sending kids to Galvez primary and middle schools to the more distant Lakeside Primary and Lake Middle.
The parents argue it makes no sense to peel off their homes from the rest of their neighborhood.
"It's insane. It's unreal," Lang said.
District officials say they're listening to the parents' concerns. But they say the task of redrawing attendance zones is complicated, and moving a line in one place requires changes elsewhere to adjust.
"You move one side of the bed sheet; the other side needs to go. You just keep doing that back and forth," said Jeff Parent, the district's planning and construction supervisor. "We've been through that," he added.
Creating new zones for high schools sets off a domino effect because of Ascension's feeder-based system.
Primary and middle schools are generally aligned to funnel kids into specific high schools. So adjustments to the high school zones for Prairieville High are necessarily causing all sort of changes to attendance zones down the line, school officials have said.
With the proposed redistricting, board members and their demographer, Mike Hefner, have been trying not only to carve out the new high school district and match up other zones but also balance student populations and the percentages of socially and economically disadvantaged children at overcrowded, existing schools. They are also having to make practical adjustments for bus routes on sometimes narrow or dead-end parish roads.
One of the latest changes — for which school officials tentatively singled support — would alter proposed maps to include both sides of L. Landry Road northwest of Gonzales in one feeder system. Located between La. 74 and La. 621, the road is currently proposed as the dividing line between the Dutchtown and East Ascension highs schools' districts and their feeders, but the road is a narrow corridor with little room for multiple buses or turnarounds.
By creating more elbow room at existing schools, the maps are also planning for a projected 10.4% growth rate over the next three to five years in one of Louisiana's fastest-growing parishes with its ninth largest traditional school system in 2022-23.
The new high school itself is also being built to accommodate that growth, which has pushed up the populations of the parish's three east bank school to 2,000 or more students.
Dutchtown High was Louisiana's most populous traditional public high school, with nearly 2,500 students last fall. The other two east bank schools, East Ascension and St. Amant highs, were in the top 10 statewide for student enrollment, state October 2022 counts show.
The School Board has been developing the new maps for about a year. The board had public input sessions in June, in which residents could vote on proposed maps.
Earlier in that process this year, parents of some prospective or current high school students aired concerns about shifting their kids out of their current or imminent high school spots. Childhood friendships, athletics and other extracurriculars were the worries then.
The board adjusted by allowing incoming sophomores and higher to remain in their existing home schools in 2024, a move that will potentially slow the early growth of Prairieville High and keep a few more kids in overcrowded high schools, school officials have said.
School officials are also considering a nearly $60 million renovation and expansion of the prekindergarten to eighth-grade Lake Elementary School to make room for the shifting attendance zones as well as regular growth. The expenditure would be the centerpiece of a possibly $125 million bond issue being considered for the ballot in April.
The result of all the changes has sometimes led to outcomes that don't add up to parents once they get a look. The board rolled out two new versions late last week that both included the controversial division of Keystone of Galvez.
Parents there pointed out they will have to pass the Galvez elementary schools to get their children to Lakeside Primary and Lake Middle under the proposed changes.
Terry Moore, 38, one of those parents, said he lives around the corner from Galvez Primary, where his son goes to school.
"I can hear the morning announcements from my back patio," he said in an interview.
Estimates produced Tuesday night through a geographic software program showed that 182 students would be shifted back into the Prairieville High feeder system if the board included the potentially excluded part of Keystone of Galvez. Ninety-seven students would be in the primary grades, 55 students in the middle school grades and 30 students in the high school grades.
Even under the attempted student population balancing in the latest proposed maps, Galvez Primary is projected to have 750 students, among the highest in the district. Galvez Middle would have 638, about middle of the pack.
Jackie Tisdell, the school system spokeswoman, said school officials hope to have the maps ready for a vote on Nov. 7. The board plans another meeting next week, possibly on Wednesday, to review the maps again and the latest adjustments.
Longtime School Board member John Murphy told residents that one of the problems is that Keystone of Galvez has so many homes. Parish plans adopted in late 2013 show the development was expected to have almost to 930 lots.
Board member John DeFrances raised the prospect of making a larger and more even division at a bridge in the middle of the neighborhood to balance the numbers.
"That might be the better separation for that neighborhood," he said.
Earlier versions of the proposed attendance changes had proposed a similarly large split. Some residents spoke out against that idea, however.
"Just don't separate it at all," Jatera Taylor told DeFrances.
"We like where we’re at," added Justin Bolinger, another mom of Galvez area students. "We're in Galvez. We want to go to Galvez. We don't want to go all the way to Lakeside. That's so far away."
Taylor said later that her family had moved to Keystone of Galvez for the Galvez schools and would move out before the changes take effect.
Superintendent Edith Walker and Murphy told residents that the board would take a look at the maps again before a final decision.
"We're gonna look at this. We're looking at it now," Murphy said. "I can promise you that we have looked it before, several times, but we will look at it again."
David J. Mitchell can be reached at [email protected] or followed on Twitter, @newsiedave.
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