EDUCATION

N.P. Moss switch marks changes for education in north Lafayette

The Daily Advertiser

N.P. Moss will become a neighborhood elementary school in 2019.

The school will be for kindergarten through fifth grades. Its projected enrollment is around 450 students. Those students now attend Alice Boucher Elementary or J.W. Faulk Elementary.

They also are expected to come from Lafayette Parish School Board districts 3 and 4, which encompass broad areas of north Lafayette.

For the past few years, N.P. Moss has housed an alternative program for students with repeated behavior problems. That will move to the LeRosen building at the corner of Pinhook Road and the Evangeline Thruway. Some programs from LeRosen will move to a newly-purchased building near the Acadiana Mall.

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The board approved the change Wednesday in what board member Justin Centanni termed a successful combination of academic and facilities planning.

“We’re getting a new school at Moss and room for the alternative program at LeRosen. It’s going to save us nearly $8 million for a wing at Alice Boucher,” Centanni said. "We’re getting rid of some portable buildings at Boucher, all because the superintendent and his staff were able to plan ahead and come up with this scenario."

Superintendent Donald Aguillard said the change will result in smaller student populations at Alice Boucher and J.W. Faulk. In particular, the enrollment at Alice Boucher is expected to go from around 700 students to around 440, he said.

Boucher and Faulk have long been among some of Lafayette Parish’s lowest-rated elementary schools. With fewer students thanks to the new school, Aguillard said, teachers will be able to give students more focused attention.

“What we need is continuity. We need a safe learning environment. We need the professionals to have the capacity to work with students as needed,” Aguillard said. “It’s just impossible to do with large populations.”

Both schools — along with Lafayette Middle, Carencro Heights Elementary, Carencro High, Northside High and Moss Prep — are included in a new transformation zone designed to provide more resources to schools with low performance. Together, the schools have received a $1.2 million grant from the state.

That money will go toward implementing a stronger curriculum and providing professional development to teachers and staff.

While preparing the grant application, Lafayette officials found four common themes at all seven schools:

A high turnover among faculty and administrators
A higher rate of teacher absenteeism than at other schools
A higher-than-average percentage of teachers working outside of their certification area
A high rate of truancy among students

Lafayette officials opted for a transformation zone to address these issues. A new department has been created for this effort. This department includes a social worker, a community liaison, 16 master teachers and an executive master teacher.

Others in the community, including the Pugh Family Foundation and the Schumacher Group, have pitched in with tutoring services at Alice Boucher and J.W. Faulk.

The changes could have benefits on the facilities front as well. Aguillard said it probably will not be necessary to build a new classroom wing at Alice Boucher, freeing up millions of dollars for other projects.

“A lot of this also came out of our evaluation of the number of temporary buildings,” Board President Erick Knezek said. “We looked at the facilities we did have and how to better utilize them. I think this is a great decision across the board.”