Andrew Yon, president of the International School of Louisiana board, opens a meeting Wednesday night to discuss how to deal with the Camp Street building’s overcrowding issue. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
A proposal to separate the International School of Louisiana’s Eastbank and Westbank buildings into two campuses for lower- and upper-school students is still just one idea among many for next year, the school board promised a cafeteria full of concerned parents, and set a two-week deadline for themselves to endorse or reject it.
The Nov. 8 deadline adopted by the board at Wednesday night’s meeting is just to make a decision on that option, though a solution to the overcrowding at the Camp Street campus may not be found by then, said board chair Andrew Yon. The quick turnaround is necessary, he said, in order to accommodate those parents from both campuses who want to apply to another school instead of taking their children across the river.
“By far, the most disruptive option available is splitting lower and middle schools,” Yon says.
Throughout the nearly two-hour meeting, however, Yon reiterated that such a reorganization is not the only option being considered, and most of Wednesday’s discussion centered on various alternatives. Some of them included:
- Adding modular buildings to the Camp Street campus, which many parents seemed to embrace, though school officials worried about the loss of space in the already crowded outside yards.
- Finding a satellite location within walking distance of Camp Street to split off enough classes to make room, such as kindergarten and the first grade. Board member Jon Wettermark said he is currently looking into a former state government building three blocks away on Thalia that could hold ten classrooms.
- Altering the incoming kindergarten class at Camp Street. The most drastic action would eliminate it altogether, while other suggestions included eliminating just two of the four sections, or moving them to Olivier Street. But given the attrition natural to an immersion program (bilingual students who leave are difficult to replace), starting with only 25 students per section in kindergarten could lead to very small grades later on.
- Renting a few classrooms from a school that is not yet at full capacity, similar to the way ENCORE Academy is spending its first year sharing space with Crocker Arts and Technology School in their new building. Yon said this was an option the board had not begun exploring, but promised to look into it.
Yon stressed that the Camp Street overcrowding problem needs a long-term solution, which administrators estimate is space for about eight classrooms — both to accommodate the growing size of the upper grades and to restore some of the extra rooms, such as art and remediation areas, that have already been lost. But many of the ideas on the table — or some combination of them, such as a few modulars and a slightly smaller incoming class — might give the school another year to find that long-term answer, as more school buildings become available around the city.
After such an extensive discussion of alternatives to the unpopular plan that drew them to the meeting, most parents seemed more optimistic after the discussion than when it began. Many still criticized the manner in which the East-West split idea was rolled out, with a survey discussing only it that implied it was the only option.
ISL board president Andrew Yon and new board member Chantell Harmon-Reed after she receives an appointment to the board. (Robert Morris, UptownMessenger.com)
“I believe you all are our number-one stakeholders,” said board member Dominique Wilson.
After the discussion of the Camp Street issue ended, the meeting moved on and ISL parent Chantell Harmon-Reed accepted an appointment to the board. To read our full coverage and video of the meeting, see the box below.
The video is in three parts. The first starts at the meeting’s beginning, and continues for nearly an hour before the connection was lost.
The second video begins about 10 or 15 minutes later — when the reporter realized the connection had been lost — and continues to the end of the meeting.
The third video resumes after the recess the board took following the Camp Street discussion and lasts about 15 minutes, until the board leaves for executive session.
As someone who lives directly across the street from ISL I would be strongly opposed to modular buildings in our historic residential neighborhood. Currently our area is overrun with cars (parked in driveways, on the sidewalk, blocking corners, blocking stop signs blocking fire hydrants, blocking Terpsichore, Magazine Street) during drop off and pick up because ISL does not have an efficient routine in place. The last thing the camp street campus needs is additional students.
Our area has many blighted vacant properties large enough to house a portion of ISL. I would hope that ISL could work with the city or state to possibly take possession of one of those properties and remain in the LGD.
Not In My Back Yard! I would rather NOT have a successful school like ISL (B rated, 1.5 points away from an A rating) when there are so many other positive alternatives: condominiums, an RSD school, tent city prisons!
Without the space to grow, the students who helped ISL achieve this rating will likely stop attending ISL, especially those with the financial means to move to private schools. Of course, then there will be no need for Katrina cottage type modular buildings-turned classrooms, because many of the highly successful students will have moved on.
And the neighborhood might be left with an underperforming school. But, hey, that’s better than looking at a modular building!
*snort*