Terrebonne schools consider consolidation with dwindling enrollment; public hearings set
As schools' populations dwindle, the Terrebonne Parish School District considers consolidation.
Gibson Elementary School, Bayou Black Elementary School and Honduras Elementary School have been losing students steadily every year, even predating Hurricane Ida. Terrebonne Parish School Superintendent Bubba Orgeron said he wants to submit a plan to the public that will better utilize the Parish's assets, and potentially provide teachers with a raise.
The Gibson meeting will be at 6 p.m. today at Gibson Elementary School. The Bayou Black meeting will be at 5:30 p.m. Friday at Bayou Black Elementary School. The Honduras meeting will take place at 5:30 p.m. Nov. 13 at Honduras Elementary School.
"The classroom sizes at these schools are small, particularly at Gibson and Bayou Black," Orgeron said. "You have one class at each grade level, just one class. The problem with that is the teachers have several preps. They have to teach multiple grades and multiple subjects. That can become difficult; whereas, at larger schools they teach one grade, one subject."
After presenting the plan to the public Orgeron, said he will then present it at one of the School Board committee meetings. If the plan were to pass the committee, it would then go before the full Board for approval.
The earliest the vote could go before the committee would be Nov. 14, which was moved forward like most years due to Thanksgiving.
The plan would see Gibson students pool with Schriever Elementary School, Honduras students with Village East and Acadian and Bayou Black would see some students go to Mulberry and some to Schriever.
Eroding population
These schools each teach Pre-K. Honduras goes through to fourth grade, and the other two go up to sixth. The classroom size average in all three schools is about 17 students to each teacher, and all have a grade level average across the board of a C.
Gibson Elementary has lost 31 students in the past five years and currently has 147 students. Honduras lost 57 and currently has 300. Bayou Black fluctuated, going down, then rising back up, but remains 10 less than the 2018-2019 school year. It currently has 167 students.
The declining trend cuts across Terrebonne Parish's outer communities as a whole and was part of the discussions surrounding the vote last year to rebuild Grand Caillou Elementary. These communities have faced a gradual exodus for more than a decade, and Hurricane Ida accelerated the move.
Terrebonne Parish School District lost 2,160 students district-wide in the past five years, a 12.5% decline. According to local data, those who are moving are moving toward the city, or out of the parish entirely.
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The goal
Orgeron said he wants to move students and teachers inward. This would allow teachers to serve larger classrooms and focus each teacher on fewer subjects. The consolidation also would expose students to a wider population of peers and allow for teacher collaboration.
When teachers are spread thin, teaching multiple subjects to small classes, they have to do a large amount of prep work for the many subjects. Orgeron said he wants to pool them with other teachers so that they can focus on subjects and cut down on prep work.
The goal, he said, is to get class sizes to the "sweet spot" of 24. According to Orgeron, data suggests a class size of 24 is the optimal number for student learning across the majority of grade levels.
By pooling the teachers together, they can better optimize teacher-student ratios. This would allow ease of divvying up classroom numbers to reach that "sweet spot" but also allows for cost savings on a practical level.
"When you have the size of enrollment like you do at Honduras of 250 kids, you might have like 38 kids in a grade level. You can't have one class the size of 38, so you have to have two classes of 19, so you have a lot of that going on," he said. "Honduras, for instance, has two fourth grade classrooms of 16."
This article originally appeared on The Courier: Declining enrollment has Terrebonne schools considering consolidation
