This month, voters in most of unincorporated East Baton Rouge Parish turned their governance upside down when a majority approved forming the new city of St. George. Its 86,000 or so residents will make it the fifth largest municipality in the state, just behind Lafayette and a bit ahead of Bossier City.
Many residents of the area chaffed under the current metropolitan government rule, feeling their tax dollars were used inefficiently and ineffectively. However, some also saw the establishment of a new city as a conduit to carving out a new school district that could improve upon education provision by the East Baton Rouge Parish School System, one of the state’s worst performers.
Similar past grumblings have emerged in Caddo Parish. In 2012, some parents began discussing creation of a separate district in the southern part of the parish, voicing the same concerns about the low-performing Caddo Parish School District. Presumably, the new district in the aggregate would have had better schools financed more securely. At the time Caddo had operated in the red for years and seen its financial reserves dwindle to almost nothing.
Although that effort came to naught, things haven’t stabilized much since. Caddo’s proposed fiscal year 2020 budget projects fewer than $5 million remaining in general fund reserves even spending $15 million fewer than two years ago because of continually falling enrollment. From 2014 to 2019, Caddo public school enrollment dropped 6.4 percent while parish population fell only 3.6 percent and school-age population declined by just 2 percent. Among the larger school districts in the state, only East Baton Rouge also saw a reduced student census in this period, lower by 2.6 percent.
With Caddo ranked 52nd out of the state’s 69 districts (using the latest 2018 data) in achievement that earned just a C grade, might Caddo residents seek the same separation solution seemingly in the future for East Baton Rouge, which also earned a C by finishing ranked 60th? Not likely, as a number of factors discourage that kind of response.
While most Louisiana school districts have the same boundaries as parishes, the few exceptions to that (all but two in East Baton Rouge Parish) are built around cities. Thus, it appears highly unlikely that the Legislature, which would have to approve the split and propose a constitutional amendment adding the new district, would do anything but allow creation of a Shreveport city district and another with the rest of the parish. It won’t divide Shreveport.
This arrangement would create logistical problems. Only five schools presently operate outside of Shreveport, one being a districtwide magnet school. Its only high school and middle school would be in Vivian, requiring a major trek from students in the southern part of the parish. And, reviewing the school performance scores of those four, a hypothetical district outside Shreveport would score no better, and perhaps worse, than the current district.
Besides giving its residents more control over local governance including ultimately schools, the St. George movement also provides incentive for the rest of EBRPSS to step up its game by creating a competing significantly better district next door. That wouldn’t apply in Caddo as you wouldn’t form a contrasting district demonstrably better than its parent.
The incentives present in the St. George case don’t exist in Caddo. Given the politics of school district creation in Louisiana, improvement in Caddo school performances will have to come from within the existing district because splitting off a rival district won’t spur better delivery in either.
This Article was published in the October 25th issue of The Inquisitor.