Louisiana lawmakers tour Bayou Community Academy to learn how charter schools operate

Four children led the Pledge of Allegiance to open the day's lesson for seven lawmakers attending a Thibodaux school to learn how charter schools operate.

Louisiana State Reps. Jerome Zeringue, Joseph Orgeron, Bryan Fotnenot, Phillip DeVillier, Vincent St. Blanc, Beryl Amadee, and Gregory Miller visited Bayou Community Academy on Sept. 6. The school's chief executive officer, board president, chief financial officer and students gave presentations and speeches to inform the lawmakers about their school and charter schools in general.

The gathering was one of many across the state put on by the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools to educate lawmakers, especially those without a charter school in their district, on how the schools function.

"I think it's highly important to the success of education when we look at children and where they are, and giving parents a choice of where they want to educate their children," Fontenot said. "A lot of people look at charter schools and failing school districts, and in this instance, we've got a vibrant charter school that's in an A-rated public school district. It's giving parents even more choice."

School choice has been a political topic at least since vouchers were suggested by Milton Friedman around 1955. Vouchers were proposed as a way of giving parents choice of where to spend tax dollars toward their children's education. Recently, Education Savings Accounts, a more expansive version of a voucher, has propelled the school choice argument to the forefront again.

Also known as an ESA, an education savings account is a state-held bank account that holds money dedicated toward funding a student's education. Similar to a voucher, it is promoted as giving parents a choice of how to educate their children. Unlike a voucher, it allows for much wider options: private or religious schools, homeschooling materials, private tutors, charter schools and more.

Louisiana currently does not have a government funded account.

"The state's ranked in the bottom three every year," Bill Crawford, president of the school's board, said. "I want to say thank you, as representatives of our government, that the state of Louisiana has a robust school choice program, and that's a slogan you may use in a campaign, I want you to know for me it is very personal."

Charter schools are independent public schools. They have the freedom to create their own structure for education as long as they follow state guidelines that every other public school also must follow. They are graded in Louisiana like other public schools through the LEAP test.

Crawford said the strength of a charter school is the ability to create its own academic culture, while not being beholden to specific donors.

"In Louisiana, as you well know, there's an element of two systems: there's a private system and a public system," he said. "We are what we hoped our public schools would be. We do deal with choice, and elements of catering to parents needs, but not like a private school. We're not catering to big donors."

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Bayou Community Academy has nearly 500 students enrolled and about 200 students on the waiting list. Seventy-nine percent of the currently enrolled students scored mastery or above on the LEAP test. It educates from Pre-K through eighth grade, and students must maintain a 2.4 GPA.

Pre-K is private education at the school, while the rest of the grades are public education.

Enrollment for the school begins with taking in employees' children, siblings of those already enrolled, special needs and free- and reduced-lunch children. According to the school's CEO, Melanie Becnel, the school is currently not meeting its free- and reduced-lunch children numbers, not for lack of trying, but the children are not signing up. She said the aim to step up getting the word out to parents to increase applications.

The school was founded by Sandy Holloway, who was in attendance with the lawmakers as the group toured the halls of the facility. It is at 800 E. Seventh St., the old Thibodaux Lower Elementary School. The school also has classes on the third floor of an adjacent building. Bayou Community Academy rents its space from the Lafourche Parish School Board.

Zeringue said he remembered attending school in the building when he was a child, and while the school has been heavily updated, he was swept with a feeling of nostalgia.

"I came to third and fourth grade here, and it was Thibodaux Elementary," he said. "The smell is still the same, but it was hardwood floors when I came." Asked how it was different from his childhood, he said, "The curriculum has improved, and it seems more conducive to learning."

One of the variations from the curriculum Zeringue grew up with is that Bayou Community Academy does not use textbooks. Becnel said schools have an opportunity cost when teaching students. Teachers only have a set time to educate the child. The typical approach of schools are to expose the child to a wide range of topics, she said, with little time to dive in deep on those topics.

Bayou Community Academy, she said, differs in that it leverages its strength of having the student self-contained for eight years to go much deeper into a topic.

"So they are consistently seeing the same content, just at a deeper understanding," she explained. "So by the time they come to eighth grade, they may have never touched marine biology, but they know enough about their science, they know enough about research, they know enough about discussion and debate and how to find that information, yet now they are educated enough to go find that marine biology information alone."

The 13-year-old school is looking to grow, and is set to break ground in the winter on a new 70,000 square foot building near the Eric Andolsek Park. The cost of the new facility is $23 million, raised through state, federal, local and private dollars. The school's operating expense is $4.6 million a year, according to figures provided by Sara Barrilleaux, the school's CFO.

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Louisiana lawmakers get lesson on how charter schools operate