The visual and performing arts academy will no longer be housed at Comeaux High School but will now be housed at Lafayette High starting in the fall.
The Lafayette Parish School Board voted unanimously as part of its consent agenda to move the program during its May meeting.
Both the performing arts and visual arts academies will move to Lafayette High. Eighth grade students in L.J. Alleman’s visual and performing arts program who declined going to Comeaux will have an opportunity to re-enroll and attend the program at Lafayette High. Some rising seniors at Comeaux High will be able to work out a plan that allows them to attend Comeaux for core classes and take a shuttle to Lafayette High for their academy classes.
Once Lafayette High’s enrollment is determined, additional seats may be opened for the performing and visual arts academy before the start of school, a district staff personnel said.
Board Member Jeremy Hidalgo said that it wasn’t about closing Comeaux High, which he argued had never been on the table since previous proposal suggested repurposing the campus.
Instead, the decision was about giving students the best opportunities and being fiscally responsible with the district’s money.
And he said “people in our community don’t want to go (to Comeaux).” He pointed to numbers provided by district staff that showed when the performing arts program moved from Lafayette High to Comeaux High in 2017, program enrollment numbers dropped in half and continued to decline.
Hidalgo said he supported the change and wanted to continue to give Comeaux the resources it needs to succeed in whatever its next purpose.
A new performing arts wing was built at Comeaux in 2022 after the program was moved from Lafayette High in 2016. Lafayette High is currently undergoing a rebuild on its current property on West Congress Street.
The idea of moving the visual and performing arts academy from Comeaux was brought up last fall. It was just one piece of a proposal from a hired strategic planner. That proposal included closing Comeaux altogether, which failed in a 5-4 vote during a contentious November school board meeting.
During that meeting, the school board rejected many other suggestions for closures and consolidations that were designed to save the district money. It unanimously rejected a proposal to close Duson Elementary, which would have saved the district about $1.2 million in the first year, a strategic planner projected.
If the board had accepted all of the strategic planner’s suggestions, it would have saved about $8 million annually. The board ultimately only ended up saving about $100,000 annually.
Comeaux’s enrollment has steadily declined since the 2018-19 school year, decreasing by 500 students in that time, and about 66% of families zoned for the school choose to send their students there. Its enrollment took a hit during the 2016-17 school year when about 900 students were rezoned for the newly constructed Southside High.
The Comeaux campus has a high facility investment per student, attributed in part to the construction of a performing arts wing in 2022 after the school board moved the performing arts program from Lafayette High in 2016.
During the strategic planning process last fall, Comeaux’s supporters said they felt the school had been neglected while the district invested in other campuses’ facilities and leadership.
