School reconfiguration stalls in Terrebonne

Terrebonne Parish ninth graders will remain at junior high for another year following the school board’s decision to defer reconfiguring parish public schools.

At the root of the decision was mixed views shared by educators and parents on the value of sending ninth graders to senior high school.

Houma resident Stephen Fontana, for example, is ready to see his stepson Steven Dugan move from Evergreen Junior High School to H.L. Bourgeois.

“Kids mature from peer input. If they are around older people, they will begin to mature,” said Fontana, the father of four school-aged children.

A former student in the New Orleans public school system, he said being at the high school level would also teach impressionable ninth graders a lesson in humility.

Next year, stepson Steven will enter the 10th grade at H.L. Bourgeois. His father doesn’t foresee problems adjusting academically, but is concerned about the social change.

“Being in the younger-aged realm at the high school will teach the students a valuable lesson in humility because they are no longer the ‘top dogs’ on campus. They have to start from the bottom and work their way up,” he said.

H.L. Bourgeois student Cecily Morgan said being at Evergreen Junior High School didn’t really affect her. “Being at the high school or junior high school doesn’t change who I am. I will still get the same education,” she said.

Cecily was a member of the Evergreen High Steppers. At H.L. Bourgeois, the 15-year-old is in a multitude of clubs and organizations.

“Both of my children are pretty good academic students and they have matured at the level that they are supposed to,” Cecily’s mother Faye Morgan said. “Being at the high school would not have changed that.”

Cecily’s brother, Steve Jr., is a 2007 graduate of H.L. Bourgeois and also attended Evergreen Junior High in the ninth grade. He is currently a pre-medicine major at Xavier University.

Cheryl Breaux, a counselor at Montegut Middle School, said she thinks the reconfiguration would be great a pilot program for the parish.

Piloting a four-year high school would allow school administrators and the board time to research the concept, she said.

“I think it will be socially rewarding for the students to be at the high school. But that’s just my opinion,” she said. “I can’t make a concrete statement without further investigation into the social differences between those ninth graders in high schools and those that aren’t.”

Honduras Elementary School principal Sandra Hebert has knowledge of both sides – non-high school ninth graders and high school ninth graders. Hebert graduated from a non-configured high school, but her children graduated from a configured high school.

“As a ninth and 10th grader back in 1970 to 72, I went to Terrebonne High Junior Division. Then, I went to Terrebonne High Senior Division (11th and 12th grade) in the fall of 1972,” she said. “But my children when to school in Lafourche Parish where high schools are nine through 12.”

Hebert said students learn about the importance of maintaining grade point averages for college in the ninth grade.

“If students are at the junior high school, then they feel as though they have time to get a good GPA, but actually they don’t. Those three years in high school go by so fast. Students need that four-year high school experience,” she explained.

Traditionally, high schools are ninth through 12, giving students four years at the secondary education level. However, in Terrebonne Parish only two schools have adopted this structure: Ellender Memorial High and South Terrebonne High schools.

School board member L.P. Bordelon reasons that East Houma schools can easier conform because they have fewer students.

“There is no way you are going to have four high schools in the parish with ninth through 12 graders,” he said, arguing that the high schools would quickly face overcrowding. “The parish is growing at an increasing rate.”

School board member Roosevelt Thomas is among those seeking uniformity among the high schools.

“All the high schools should have ninth graders because students learn from their peers,” he said. “The school district has been trying to conform for the past 10 years, and now we’re still going back and forth with the idea.”

For now, however, the issue is on hold.

“I want to defer it, not table it,” Bordelon said at last week’s school board meeting. “I want us to focus on the matter at hand: overcrowding in the schools, especially with the additional LA 4 classes.”