Harlan Kirgan
A plan to change how pre-school and elementary school students are organized in Eunice was brought to the St. Landry Parish School Board for discussion Thursday.
Highland Elementary would become an early learning center with a focus on 4-year-olds. The students would come from Eunice Head Start and the school system’s early education program.
The Head Start Center in Eunice would then focus on children up to 3 years old.
Kindergarten through fourth grades would be located in the city’s other elementary schools — East, Glendale and Eunice.
Superintendent Patrick Jenkins said typically classes fill up in the Head Start and pre-kindergarten programs. The plan would open up access to the programs.
Children with early education are more successful later, he said.
The school zones in Eunice will have to be adjusted, he said.
Jenkins also said the plan may be brought to Opelousas after being implemented in Eunice.
June Inhern, director of early education in the parish, said it is common for children to be turned away from early classes. The plan would open up more seats for early education through age 4, she said.
The School Board has a lease on the Head Start facility until 2058. The only cost to the School Board is that it pay 76.3% of the electric, water and sewer costs. The city pays for gas service.
School Board member Myron Guillory said the plan was presented at Highland Elementary Wednesday to parents, employees and community members and received a positive response.
School Board member Mary Ellen Donatto praised the plan for offering educational opportunities and fully utilizing facilities.
Donatto said those at the Highland meeting were not overly excited about the plan, but the majority seemed to accept the change.
“People are upset when they lose their neighborhood schools,” she said.
“Did they swallow the pill? The majority of them seemed to have because it is for the good of the city to get our little ones get more of them in,” she said.
Donatto observed that the Board has closed two schools in Opelousas and plans to reconfiguring one in Eunice.
“If that’s it. If that is the end of the road, the Board needs to say so because we are talking out of both sides of mouth right now,” she said. “I’m just asking for clarity.”
Six years ago a plan that depended on passing two taxes would have closed Highland Elementary, The taxes failed along with the plan.
Donatto said when she was new on the Board administrators were saying the district needed to close schools to save money.
She said Eunice schools will be filled to capacity if the plan is implemented.
The Eunice plan was on the Board’s agenda for discussion only and no action was taken.
Another agenda item was to discuss reconfiguring Washington Elementary from a pre-K to 8th grade school to pre-K to fifth grade.
Several Washington citizens spoke against the plan. Discussion is to be continued next month.