LAFAYETTE, La. — The Lafayette Parish School Board on Thursday advanced plans to remove long-standing portable classrooms from campuses parishwide, citing safety concerns and growing community support for replacing the temporary structures with permanent buildings.
“We truly are investing in the infrastructure in Lafayette Parish,” LPSS Superintendent Francis Touchet said during the meeting.
One of the board’s major actions was declaring several portable buildings as surplus, a step that allows the district to advertise them for sale and eventually remove them from school property.
“That’s a process that’s going to take a couple of years,” said Tracy Wirtz, the district’s communications and public relations specialist.
District officials say the move is part of a broader effort to ensure all students are housed in brick-and-mortar facilities. Many of the portable buildings, originally intended as temporary solutions, have remained on campuses for decades.
“They were never supposed to be permanent fixes,” Wirtz said. “But they stayed there, and for a number of years folks in Lafayette have said we want those portable buildings gone.”
The board also approved plans to begin adding new wings to several campuses, including Westside Elementary, Broadmoor Elementary, Ernest Gallet Elementary and others. The removal of the portable buildings will clear space for those additions.
“This is the first step in a phase of getting rid of those buildings, which hopefully will be off LPSS campuses within the next two or three years,” Wirtz said. “That’s when those projects to add wing additions will be complete.”
In other business, the board approved a resolution to sell more than $45 million in sales tax revenue bonds to fund construction of a new K–8 school in District 4.
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