Children of military personnel will be able to attend one school

Under heavy pressure from Barksdale Air Force Base top brass and influential supporters of Barksdale, the Bossier Parish School Board recently approved a charter school for the base. Barksdale joins Belle Chase Naval Station in New Orleans as the only military installation in Louisiana to have a charter school, and only the ninth in the United States.

The school will offer kindergarten through eighth grade, with a possible expansion to 12th grade. The day-to-day operations will be handled by a Texas-based charter school management program. Organizers expect to enroll up to 396 children when the school opens in the fall of next year. On-base children will have first priority for the school and any unfilled seats will be filled by a lottery for off base children. Organizers of the school believe the enrollment will eventually be about 800 students.

The school will be supervised by both the Bossier schools system and the Barksdale Global Power Museum Association board, which was granted the charter. Reportedly, the museum association hopes to lease 17 acres from Barksdale in the East Reservation, which has a large housing area for Barksdale personnel. The school will be a public school with no pre-testing or screening, the only criteria being that enrollees be military dependents.

The charter school plans to attract top teachers, many with military backgrounds, and to have special programs that will help acclimate military children from all over the globe in a centralized school environment.”

The anticipated cost of the planned new facility is estimated to be between $15 million and $20 million. The Department of Defense will not fund the school construction, and the museum association will rely on private funds and financing – probably by the issuance of bonds. Although a fund-raising effort has yet to be announced, it is expected that the Shreveport-Bossier business community will make substantial contributions to support the base and the tremendous financial economic engine that it provides to Northwest Louisiana.

The on-base school will allow children of military personnel to attend one school; currently, kindergarten through middle school students go to Kerr Elementary, Waller Elementary or Rusheon Middle schools. These schools have students from the base and Bossier City neighborhoods; the state rankings of these schools are not good (Kerr, C; Waller, D; Rusheon, D). The charter school plans to attract top teachers, many with military backgrounds and to have special programs that will help acclimate military children from all over the globe in a centralized school environment.

The financial impact of the charter school on the Bossier school system will be substantial to say the least. The school will receive the same state, local and federal funding per student that each Bossier parish school receives based on the MFP Formula for the 2017-2018 school year. The MFP for Bossier schools in the 2015-2106 school year was $2,761 per student, with additional sums for various other programs and criteria that could add up to another $4,178 per student. The MFP funding for Bossier Schools in the 2015-2016 school year was $5,309.38. A school board spokesman failed to answer what the projected total economic loss of the MFP funding would be, although she did say that potentially all Bossier schools could lose students to the new charter school.

As expected, the Bossier school board put a positive spin on the charter school approval, stating that the Bossier schools “value its long-standing partnership with Barksdale Air Force Base and remain committed in providing families with academic options they feel best address the challenges militaryconnected children face. This is clearly demonstrated by the school board’s vote June 2 to approve the Barksdale Charter School application ...” To its credit, the Bossier School Board had previously taken many steps to accommodate Barksdale students, which included a full-time military student liaison staff member, opening the Bodcau Station gate to facilitate access to Haughton school, and re-routing school buses to shorten the long ride of East Reservation students to and from school.

The charter school will obviously be a win-win for military children and their parents. Additionally, it will enhance Barksdale as a destination for military personnel and solidify its importance in the military establishment as well as the local community. How much of a financial black eye its establishment is for the Bossier school system is yet to be known.

– John E. Settle Jr.