The elimination of A.A. Songy Kindergarten Center is included in a list of future capital improvement projects for St. Charles Parish Public Schools.
The proposed project would send all A.A. Songy students to Mimosa Park Elementary after the addition of a new wing to that school. All of the buildings currently making up A.A. Songy would then become part of Lakewood Elementary.
The project will only go forward if residents vote to pass a $45 million bond issue for the schools on April 21. If passed, the planned transition would begin around February next year and be completed for the 2014-2015 school year at a total cost of approximately $7.9 million.
John Rome, executive director of physical plant services, said that the change would be in line with the district’s long-range strategic action plan.
Part of the long-range plan calls for creating schools with consistent grade configurations. The addition of kindergarten to Mimosa Park would mean that every elementary school in the parish covers either grades kindergarten through 2nd, 3rd through 5th or kindergarten through 5th.
Rome said the change would also eliminate the use of many portables at both A.A. Songy and Lakewood.
“Lakewood is one of the few areas where we tend to keep seeing small growth,” Rome said. “We’re having to find places to put classes and we’re having to consider portable structures. If we didn’t do this, we would have to expand Lakewood.
“You’ve got a situation where you can kill two birds with one stone…by letting Lakewood absorb the Songy campus and take that space that’s already there, add pre-k and kindergarten to Mimosa Park to help with grade configuration, plus add a wing (at Mimosa Park) so that A.A. Songy kids are no longer in portables.”
Rome said that sending A.A. Songy students to Mimosa would also help with school district transportation.
He said that currently, students from A.A. Songy and Mimosa share a bus. So, the bus picks students up from Mimosa Park, heads to Songy to pick more students up and then goes down the drop-off routes. If the two combined, buses would only need to make one stop.
“We’ve got an opportunity here to take care of a lot of things,” Rome said.
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