Vermilion Parish School Board votes ‘No’ to charter school

The Vermilion Parish School Board voted against a charter school entering Vermilion Parish for the second time in two years.
By a vote of 5-3, the school board said they were not in favor of a new charter school in the Maurice area.
Voting against the charter school were school board members Laura LeBeouf, Kibbie Pillette, Dale Stelly, and Charlotte Detraz.
Voting for the charter school were Christy Hebert, Chris Gautreaux and Jason Roy.
With “No” vote from the local board, the charter school now has to take it the state level. The board has to make a presentation to the BESE Board in hopes it approves their application.
The school wants to be a kindergarten through sixth grade school and then expand to the eighth grade in the future. The charter school would house 615 students.
The “no” vote also means that the Vermilion Charter Academy will become a Type 2 charter school instead of a Type 1 charter school, if BESE approves it on the state level.
A Type 2 charter school will be run by its charter board members and it will accept students throughout the Acadiana area.
Students from Lafayette Parish and Acadia Parish and other parishes can enroll in the school.
Had the school board accepted the charter school, the charter school would have only been able to accept Vermilion Parish students, and the public school board also would have had a say as to what areas of the parish the charter school could draw students from.
Before voting, LeBeouf explained her reason as to why she was voting no. She said the parish would lose close to $6 million in MFP funding from the state, along with having to lay off school employees because of the loss of state funding.
LeBeouf pleaded with the school board to first fill the empty school buildings by rezoning. “We have all these empty buildings and space,” said LeBeouf. “I am responsible for the students and teachers.”
Dupuis explained why he voted no. He said he keeps hearing that 600 students will be enrolling in the Maurice area in the next four years. He said he has a hard time believing there will be that many new students in four years.
School board member Jason Roy said the school board “keeps kicking the can” when it comes to fixing the overcrowding problem in the North Vermilion area. He added that former school boards failed to resolve the overcrowding problem in the northern part of the parish.
The charter school will help with the overcrowding at Maurice Elementary, Roy added. He said a charter school being built in the Maurice area would not cost the parish taxpayers any money, because it will be built and paid for by the Charter USA School.