Slaughter school works to add ninth grade in fall

SLAUGHTER — The Slaughter Community Charter School plans to add a ninth-grade class in the second year of the school’s operation, school officials said at a community meeting Friday.

The school opened in August with grades seven and eight after its board won a federal court battle waged by black East Feliciana Parish residents opposed to the school.

A majority of East Feliciana Parish School Board members had voted earlier to allow the charter school to operate with seventh through 12th grades. The School Board has an elementary school in Slaughter.

The school is on park property owned by the East Feliciana Parish Police Jury, but Slaughter Alderman Nick St. Germain said negotiations are under way with an area landowner for a possible permanent site.

The cost estimates for adding another grade include $98,000 for a temporary classroom building, $57,489 for furniture and equipment and $22,000 for instructional material, according to plans presented at Friday’s meeting.

The charter School Board is working with 4th Sector Solutions, a firm that offers financial, personnel and other services to charter schools.

Tess Bradford, of the firm, said the C.B. and Irene W. Pennington Foundation has awarded a grant that will go a long way in meeting the fundraising goal, but the school also is asking for material, professional services, equipment and financial donations.

The school hopes to have construction finished by June 30.

School Director Robert M. Webb Jr. said 100 students are enrolled in grades seven and eight. The enrollment is almost equally divided between black and white students, and 77 percent are eligible for free and reduced-cost school lunches.

After two nine-week grading periods, 98 percent of the students are on track for promotion to the next grade, Webb said.

Veteran educator Glenn Brady, of Clinton, told the assembly that the parish School Board members who voted to grant the charter school a franchise in 2009 “displayed a great deal of courage” because community sentiment in other parts of the parish was against the move.

Board members who supported the charter school said they hoped the number of students who leave Slaughter Elementary School after the sixth grade to attend private or parochial schools would decline as parents opted for the charter school.

Opponents charged that the loss of Slaughter students after the sixth grade was racially motivated.

Brady said Friday that his research showed that between 1947 and 2000, the percentage of Slaughter students who declined to enroll in the seventh grade at Jackson or Clinton ranged from 25 percent to 50 percent each year.

“They were going somewhere else before integration,” said Brady, who was the parish superintendent from 2005 to 2008.

Charter board President Glen LeDoux said the Slaughter operation is a charter school because that was the only available avenue to get it started.

The key to its long-term success, however, will be that it is a school with backing from the community, he said.