In a lopsided quarterly joint meeting of the Lafayette Parish School Board and Lafayette Parish Consolidated Council — six school board members attended but only two council members (Don Bertrand and Jay Castille) showed up — topics ranging from a pilot program for online curricula to the swine flu to traffic congestion near schools during drop-off and pick-up times were discussed.
The elected officials were briefed the upcoming Lafayette Parish eCampus, a pilot program that launches Oct. 1 and will offer high school students the opportunity to take courses and make up classes on-line. They were also briefed on a survey parents of public school students will be asked to fill out on whether they would like the H1N1 flu vaccine available at their children’s schools.
The joint body also discussed seeking Safe Routes to School grant funding to help build sidewalks near schools around the parish where traffic gets congested as parents queue up in cars and SUVs to drop-off and pick-up their children. District 6 LPSB representative Greg Awbrey says it’s a problem at “pretty much all the elementary schools that don’t have driveways.” The idea behind the sidewalks is to make the schools more pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly, thus reducing the number of drop-offs and pick-ups. “For instance, Prairie Elementary has a lot of neighborhoods around it and behind it, but there’s no way to get from the neighborhood to the school without walking in the street or in the ditch,” Awbrey explains. “So, students can’t walk. And if they’re not more than half a mile from the school, they don’t get bus transportation.”
David Calhoun and Elizabeth “EB” Brooks are the first two employees of Lafayette Central Park Inc., the nonprofit charged with turning Lafayette Consolidated Government’s 100-acre Johnston Street Horse Farm property into a passive public park. Calhoun was named executive director, and Brooks is director of planning and design.
At Thursday's State of the Economy luncheon, LEDA President and CEO Gregg Gothreaux said PXP has already quietly hired 180 people for its Broussard expansion.
There will soon be a whole lot of shakin’ going on at Benny’s Sportshack Supplement Depot, a new concept by Opelousas native Benny Nele. Located at 2002 Johnston St., the supplement shop, smoothie bar and café, featuring hot off the press paninis and wraps, plans to open in late May.
This year’s Cool Town issue is all about people who are not native to South Louisiana but made a conscious decision to be here, to be among us, to participate in our culture and contribute to it.
A shelved ordinance transferring $200,000 from a northside drainage project to a south Lafayette development may not break any laws, but it stinks to high heaven.
An effort to restore a shuttered dancehall and document other vacant or razed honky-tonks could serve as a model for saving an endangered species of entertainment.
Lafayette’s gene pool has been host to a long line of eccentric characters who have blurred the lines between crazy, genius, disturbed and curiously entertaining.
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