Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

What an unexpected twist to our spring semester and to everyone’s daily lives last week brought.

As you know, Gov. John Bel Edwards on Friday put closures into effect for all public K-12 public schools in the state of Louisiana until April 13. Fortunately, our curriculum team was already working on a plan in case closures were necessary. This allowed our school district to get curriculum resources posted to our website over the weekend for our kindergarten through eighth grade students.

Parents and students can check the “Coronavirus Closure Resources & Information” section of the St. John the Baptist Parish Public School District’s website at www.stjohn.k12.la.us for these materials. Also located there are practice LEAP tests, schedules and resources for pre-K students, links to free educational websites for all ages, including high school students, and more. This area will continue to be updated with additional materials as they become available. In addition to our website, we will be communicating with families through our district Facebook and Twitter accounts @SJBPschools and our automated text messaging system so please monitor these for the latest information.

Also in this section we have a link to some Frequently Asked Questions from the Louisiana Department of Education. The LDOE is making decisions daily about matters affected by the closure so it’s a good idea to check this often. Among the decisions already made are to temporarily suspend the instructional minutes requirements for this year (meaning students won’t have to make up this time during the summer) and to give graduating seniors flexibility in regards to graduation requirements.

At this time, LEAP 2025 test for grades 3-8 will begin no earlier than April 27. The high school LEAP 2025 schedule remains unchanged. However, while assessments will still be available to parents and schools if they choose, the LDOE will not report school and district performance scores in the fall for the 2019-20 school year. The Louisiana Department of Education is also working with ACT to identify new dates for testing windows.

Locally, the St. John the Baptist Parish Public School District’s Department of Child Nutrition is providing meals for children 18 years and younger at two locations. Students may pick up breakfast and/or lunch at East St. John Preparatory Academy or West St. John Elementary between 7 a.m. and noon Monday through Friday.

While students are out, our custodial staff is conducting a deep cleaning and disinfection of our campuses.

We realize this closure has created a lot of questions for parents and students, and even for us as a school district. Please know that as we get the answers we will pass them on to you.

Jennifer Boquet is communications specialist for St. John the Baptist Parish Public Schools. She can be reached at jboquet@stjohn.k12.la.us.