ST. GEORGE, LA – The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board confirmed this week that it has officially approved the first steps toward building a second public high school in the St. George area, stressing that the move was part of a long-term plan that simply required about six decades to fully mature.
For more than 60 years, an area now home to over 80,000 residents has relied on a single public high school, a situation officials say was never a problem until people began pointing out that it very clearly was.
School leaders explained that population growth in Southeast Baton Rouge happened gradually, beginning in the 1980s, accelerating in the 1990s, exploding in the 2000s, and becoming impossible to ignore sometime around last Wednesday.
Board members emphasized that the timing of the announcement has absolutely nothing to do with St. George forming its own city or pursuing an independent school district, calling that assumption “unfair” and “deeply inconvenient.”
“This school was always coming,” one official said, “we just didn’t want to rush into anything.”
If approved, construction could begin within the next few years, marking a major milestone in what officials describe as their proactive approach to addressing problems immediately after residents threaten to solve them themselves.
