LEONARD GRAY

LUTCHER – Adjustments to St. James Parish’s Pupil Progression Plan, suggested this week to the St. James School Board, are aimed at improving LEAP test scores for eighth-grade students. Janie Vee Henderson, administrative director of student services, offered three options for the board’s consideration: In the first option, those first-time eighth-grade students, who score at the Unsatisfactory level on LEAP’s Language Arts and Math components, would retake eighth grade. To be promoted to ninth grade, a student must score at or above the Approaching Basic level on those components. In the second option, those first-time eighth-grade students who score at the Unsatisfactory level, but met all other academic requirements, would move to high school, ranked in the grade 8.5 program. Those students would also retake the eighth-grade LEAP that spring, as well as the ninth-grade Iowa test. In addition, those grade 8.5 students would have to attend summer remediation LEAP classes. In the third option, beginning in the current school year, any Option I or II student at least age 17 may enter the pre-GED program. Other tweaks to the Pupil Progression Plan include a mandated 162 school days each term. Students who have taken the initial Graduate Exit Exam and failed shall continue to take all or parts of the former GEE and pass all components, plus earn the minimum of 23 Carnegie Units to meet high school graduation requirements. In other matters before the board, the Rev. Bennord Lee of Prevailing Faith Ministries in Lutcher took Superintendent Dr. P. Edward Cancienne to task, labeling his “Blueprint for Better Schools” program racist and backwards. “This takes us back into the past, into the years of segregation, separation and hatred,” Lee said. “The focus is to take white kids away from the integrated schools in the black neighborhoods. God is not pleased with your plan.” Cancienne did not respond to Lee’s comments. The superintendent’s plan, to be implemented next year, includes establishing Lutcher High School with grades 7-12, with Lutcher Junior High School reworked into a new Lutcher Elementary School. Meanwhile, the present Lutcher Elementary School would be reworked into a vocational-technical school, teaching job and job-hunting skills to students.