Avoyelles School Board leases Mansura High to RRCA

Mansura High School will once again be filled with students, teachers and staff when Red River Charter Academy opens this summer for the 2019-20 school year.

In its second special meeting in one week, the Avoyelles Parish School Board approved leasing the closed school property to the recently approved charter school for $3,500 a month for 45 years.

The board rejected that proposal in a special meeting on March 18 on a 4-5 vote. Board President Lynn Deloach and members Robin Moreau, Stanley Celestine Jr. and Aimee Dupuy voted in favor while board members Latisha Small, Chris Robinson, Chris LaCour, Van Kojis and Rickey Adams opposed the proposal.

MARCH 21 VOTE

A few days later, on March 21, the proposal to lease the property to Red River was approved -- even though it failed to attract any additional votes -- on a 4-1 vote with one member abstaining and three absent.

Only six board members attended the special meeting last Thursday. Deloach, Moreau, Celestine and Dupuy voted to authorize the lease. Small voted against the matter, saying she wanted a higher per-month lease payment from RRCA. Robinson abstained. Kojis, Adams and LaCour were absent.

Whether intentionally or coincidentally, the board members who opposed the charter school can still say they never voted for the lease.

It also resulted in the decision being made by less than a majority of the full board.

District Attorney Charles Riddle told a small delegation of RRCA supporters at the meeting that the action was being taken only because state law requires a local school board to give a state-approved charter school the opportunity to lease vacant school property.

RRCA Board President Brad Augustine said the board approval of the 45-year lease allows the charter school to obtain financing for capital improvements and start-up costs.

Work on the school should begin shortly after the lease begins on May 1.

“This means Red River Charter will open for the 2019-20 school year,” Augustine said.

CLEAN-UP, ROOF, HVAC

“The first thing to do is basic clean-up,” he continued. “Major work will include repairing the roof and the HVAC system.”

The lease will be re-evaluated in five years and then again whenever RRCA comes up for re-authorization by the state.

The lease rate will be reappraised after 15 years and adjusted to reflect property values at that time. However, that re-appraisal will not include any improvements made by RRCA, thus ensuring the school does not end up paying more in its lease due to capital improvements.

The charter school also has the option to purchase the Mansura property after leasing it for a year.

When the special meeting was scheduled for Thursday, the agenda called for the lease to be discussed in a closed session.

The newspaper filed a written challenge, noting the state Open Meetings Law requires such issues to be discussed in public.

Riddle told board members he agreed with the newspaper’s position and that the outside chance that Red River might file a lawsuit to force the board to lease the property to the school is not enough to use the “pending litigation” justification for discussing the issue behind closed doors.

As it turned out, there would not have been the necessary two-thirds vote of board members to hold a closed session.

Red River Charter had been seeking approval of the School Board and the state Board of Elementary & Secondary Education for over five years before BESE approved its charter this past December.

The school will open as a middle school for grades 6-8 and will add a high school grade each year until it serves grades 6-12.

RRCA has received a state grant of $240,000 and has applied for a private foundation grant of about the same amount to help with those initial costs.

RRCA board member Jessica Couvillion said officials with the Town of Mansura have already promised to help organize a community effort to clean up the former school site.

Mayor Kenneth Pickett and the Town Council were instrumental in prompting RRCA to continue its efforts to lease the Mansura High site even after the School Board had said it wanted to hold the property as a “spare” school to be used in the event another school was damaged or destroyed.

Couvillion said it means a lot to the new school to have the level of community support that has been shown by residents, businesses and municipal officials of Mansura.