New Saints WR Polk eager to show what he can do 1C
N O L A.C O M
|
S u n d ay, J u n e 7, 2026
Public schools shrink while staffing grows With state funding uncertain, tough choices are ahead
$2.50X
N.O. courts became flash point in legislative session Landry worked behind the scenes on bills aimed at city, insiders say
BY TYLER BRIDGES Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By LESLIE WESTBROOK
St. Landry Parish school buses are parked outside the school system warehouse in Opelousas on Monday.
School enrollment down, employment up
BY PATRICK WALL
Staff writer
Joey Richard likes to say that he conducts research from behind his barber chair. It’s where Richard, the owner of Holliwood Cutz barber shop in Opelousas, deduced that the local school system is shrinking. “Every year I’ve been in business,” he said, “I’m cutting less and less kids.” Like nearly every other school district in Louisiana, St. Landry Parish has seen enrollment fall as families have fewer kids, move away or opt for charters or homeschool. Yet even as the school system lost roughly a quarter of its students over the past decade, its workforce grew by nearly 20%. School officials say the posiTHE CRISIS tions are necessary to serve the OF DECLINING area’s many students with complex needs — but it’s not clear ENROLLMENT the district can afford them. IN LA.’S Richard, who has two schoolTRADITIONAL aged children and whose wife is a classroom aide, watched PUBLIC with dismay last month as local SCHOOLS voters rejected a tax hike that would have boosted school emSecond in an ployees’ low pay, leading frusoccasional trated bus drivers — who earn less than $25,000 annually — to series stage a sick-out. When Richard attended the School Board meeting a few days after the May vote, an official in the finance department said he would cut some positions and reduce his own salary to chip away at the district’s nearly $8 million deficit.
EMPTY DESKS
ä See SCHOOLS, page 3A
Nearly 40% of Louisiana school districts lost students from 2014 to 2024 even as they added employees. School district Allen Parish Beauregard Parish Cameron Parish City of Monroe School District Claiborne Parish Concordia Parish Evangeline Parish
STUDENTS
STAFF
-11% -7% -13% -4% -4% -18% -13%
6% 1% 2% 8% 34% 5% 5%
Sources: U.S. Department of Education, Common Core of Data
Staff graphic
ä See more of this graphic inside. PAGE 4A
Gov. Jeff Landry’s opening address to the state Legislature three months ago took an emotional turn when he looked up at the visitors gallery in the House chamber and asked the family of Jacob Carter to stand up. Jacob would be alive today, ä Legislature Landry told the hushed crowd, if passes more a delinquent teenager had been at home, unable to leave without than 900 an ankle monitor betraying his bills. PAGE 10A departure. Instead, Landry said, “incompetent” juvenile court judges in New Orleans had stopped tracking the teenager, and he killed Jacob, a visiting bagel shop owner, outside the French Quarter one evening. In his remarks, the governor then moved beyond juvenile court judges to indict the entire judicial system in New Orleans. “I strongly urge this Legislature to implement rigorous judicial reform, as justice delayed,
ä See SESSION, page 8A
La. heavily relying on nondisclosure agreements in economic talks Officials say secrecy necessary to protect deals from competing states BY SAM KARLIN Staff writer
Joey Richard and his son Dylan, 12, chat as they walk and roll down to their neighborhood mailboxes in Sunset on Monday. Dylan will enter sixth grade this fall at Helix AI and Medical Academy.
As Louisiana officials negotiated with Hyundai to build a massive steel mill in the state, they used confidential agreements to provide much more generous incentives than have been publicly known. Records obtained by The Times-Picayune show that Louisiana — through the state and local governments and Entergy — collectively offered incentives worth $2.6 billion to Hyundai, a package that amounts to roughly half the overall cost of the $5.8 billion steel plant that the company plans to build in Donaldsonville.
ä See TALKS, page 12A
Old church, new beginning Mandeville couple plans to restore 1886 building
BY BOB WARREN Staff writer
Two Presbyterians buy an old Methodist church. … “I know, right?” Amy Crane said one recent afternoon, and shrugged, realizing it sounds like the opening of a joke. “Yeah, we bought a church.” The Methodist Episcopal Church in New
WEATHER HIGH 90 LOW 78 PAGE 8B
Orleans established a mission in Mandeville in 1865 that would go on to become one of the northshore’s longest-standing Black congregations. The original church was replaced in 1886, with a wood building becoming its home on Lamarque Street, just a couple blocks off Lake Pontchartrain. For decades, Newell United Methodist Church thrived. But in recent years the church saw a dwindling number of worshippers. It closed in 2023. “COVID was the death of the church,” said
ä See CHURCH, page 6A
Business ......................1E Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Classified ..................... 2F Living............................1D Opinion ........................6B Commentary ................7B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
John and Amy Crane stand outside Newell Christian Chapel in Mandeville on May 27. The Cranes bought the church to preserve its history and cultural significance in the community. STAFF PHOTO By BRETT DUKE
13TH yEAR, NO. 299