During the 11 years that St. George backers have sought to form a city, a common misconception is that the new city, if formed, would immediately result in a new companion school district carved out of the East Baton Rouge Parish school district, forcing parents to make sudden, momentous school choices.
It won’t.
“We did not create a school district today,” Andrew Murrell, a spokesman for the effort, said at a press conference Monday. “Your kid is not going anywhere today.”
The Louisiana Supreme Court revived such concerns Friday when it overturned lower court rulings that stalled the city for years. The high court found the plan for the City of St. George was sufficient and that incorporation should proceed.
Murrell acknowledged that creating a new St. George school district remains a key goal, saying such a district is “long overdue,” but it won’t come fast or with ease.
“We’re talking a few years from zero to accomplishment,” he said.
“It takes a long time’
Under current law, it’s very hard to create a new school district. You need to win a two-thirds vote of the state Legislature to put an amendment to the state Constitution on the ballot. That amendment then needs to pass with a majority vote of the entire state and the entire parish affected, in this case East Baton Rouge.
“It takes a long time to create a school district,” Murrell explained. “It’s not created overnight. So I can’t give you a timeframe and I can’t give you a process.”
Southeast Baton Rouge school supporters tried twice, in 2012 and 2013, to pass a constitutional amendment for what would have been known as the Southeast Baton Rouge Community School System but fell short.
Taking a page from Central, backers of that failed school secession effort opted to try to form a new city, which would be called St. George. Central's incorporation into a city helped persuade lawmakers it was a true political entity capable of running its own school system.
So while being a city is likely to help the City of St. George curry favor with lawmakers, it is not the only obstacle. A St. George school district would mean a lot of potential school disruption, as well as concerns that it would exacerbate racial and economic segregation in the parish.
Even if backers are able to get a two-thirds vote at the state Capitol, they will likely have a tougher time in persuading the electorate than supporters did when voters endorsed new school districts in Baker, Zachary and Central.
And they will have to get more support outside southeast Baton Rouge.
Only residents of the proposed city were eligible to vote in that October 2019 election; it passed with 54% in support and 46% in opposition. In creating a school district, all voters in East Baton Rouge — even voters in Baker, Central and Zachary — would get to weigh in.
Days of Future Past
The Legislature is currently considering a proposal that would simplify the complicated process of creating new school districts but detractors say it is a backdoor way of forming the St. George school district and an attempt do so without a vote by all residents of the parish.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board is formally opposing House Bill 6, by State Rep. Emily Chenevert, R-Baton Rouge, as is the Baton Rouge Area Chamber. The full House has considered the legislation three times. A fourth debate is scheduled May 7.
HB6 seeks to remove legal barriers that make it very hard to create new public school districts in Louisiana. In doing so, it could activate the left-for-dead Southeast Baton Rouge Community School System, which was approved on paper but never funded since the accompanying constitutional amendment failed.
This “zombie school district,” as opponents describe it, could be a starting point a new St. George school district.
Chenevert recently amended her bill. She says the bill now protects the right of people to vote — though only voters within the proposed school district, not the parish that is being divided — and it removes the statewide vote currently required. And creating school districts also would not require the two-thirds vote of the Legislature.
At the Monday press conference, Chris Rials, vice chairman of the St. George Transition District, disavowed any interest in reviving the Southeast Baton Rouge Community School System.
“Why would we want to push a new school district when it only includes half of our citizens?” Rials asked. “So that whole school district as far as we’re concerned is dead. There’s no one trying to push that school district.”
Rials said that standing up the new city is the top priority for St. George organizers and a new school district will have to wait.
“It’s gonna take time,” Rials said. “What are the boundaries? That has to be decided. All of that takes time."
Boundary confusion
The proposed lines for a potential St. George school district have shifted dramatically through the years and it’s unclear what they will ultimately be.
School district lines need not match municipal lines. Baker, Central and Zachary’s school lines don’t match those of their respective cities. The Zachary school district, in particular, is far larger than the city.
The proposed Southeast Baton Rouge Community School System from 2013, the first school map proffered, is shaped like a slice of pie. Its boundaries would start at the Interstate 10/12 split and extend east on I-12 and southeast on I-10 to the Livingston and Ascension parish lines.
If that district went into effect today, it would take with it 11 schools. According to projection issued last week by the parish school system, about 8,350 students live in those boundaries, or about 20% of the children in the system, and they attend 80 district schools.
About 4,100 students in all would have to change schools. Southeast Middle would lose the most, almost 600 students, followed by Baton Rouge Magnet High, which would lose more than 500 students.
At one point, the City of St. George backers issued a far larger school map, which included all of the 2013 district and much more, but dropped it after their first petition drive failed. In 2018, they returned with a much smaller city map, but never released a new school map.
The St. George city boundaries include some of the 2013 proposed school district, but leaves some of it out. The new city also ventures south of I-10, capturing the vast majority of the southeastern corner of the parish, from Bluebonnet Boulevard in the west to the Ascension and Iberville parish lines in the east.
The city contains eight public schools and three more schools are close by. School officials have not released a fresh projection using St. George municipal lines, but in 2019 they found such a district would compel nearly 4,000 children to change schools.
And that district would be wealthy, at least at first.
That same year, a state-sponsored simulation found that such a district would result in a 15% cut in funding for the East Baton Rouge Parish school system while making the new St. George the fifth-richest district in the state.
If St. George district attracted a lot of new students, it could run into space problems quickly.
The parish school system has plans to build a new elementary and a new high school in the St. George area, but those projects might be sidelined if a St. George district comes into being fast. The new elementary school is being designed and is scheduled to be complete in summer 2026. The completion date for the new high school has not yet been determined, but would need to be no later than 2030 or 2031.
The elementary school property is not in the city of St. George, but is surrounded by the new city. The high school property is in the new city, but is adjacent to the City of Baton Rouge; there have been proposals to annex that property into the Baton Rouge city limits.
