Change can be a fickle master.
When it is welcome, we call it progress. But when it is unwanted, we generally reserve some less refined terms for it.
There is one certainty about change, however, and that is it is constant. One cannot fight the march of time; one can merely go with it or fight it. Those who fight it, though, are ultimately left behind as the world continues to turn.
The St. James Parish school system has had to make some difficult decisions lately. The march of time has changed the face of the parish and has forced the powers that be to close two school facilities within the past few years and consider closing two more within a three-year span.
Undoubtedly there will be resistance to these moves, and understandably so. No one wants their child to be uprooted and have to switch schools. No one wants to see the school they attended be shuttered. But school systems do not run on sentimentality.
Gone are the days when a school could operate with just a handful of students. Today’s interconnectivity and system of standards and practices dictate that any school, no matter its size, will incur significant costs in trying to live up to these ideals. Keeping unnecessary facilities open is unfair to both the students at that school and every other student in the district.
Present-day school systems are all about getting the best bang for the buck and doing more with less.
So while these future closings may seem like personal attacks on the communities in which the schools exist, the district is reality is trying to keep up with the times in an increasingly hostile environment. Only time in its never-ending march toward the unknown will tell if the decisions made today are the correct ones.