The Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts: The First 30 Years

By Dr. Bill Ebarb

The Louisiana School was created by state law to challenge academically and artistically gifted high school students from throughout Louisiana. It was the second such residential school in the nation and served as a model for the creation of similar schools in other states. This is the story of the students, instructors, staff, and others who created and have continued the school against tough odds and continuing budget cuts. It presents the chronological history, a summary of many of the accomplishments that led to international recognition, and a look into the culture that can only be found at the Louisiana School.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Dec 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504961356

Dr. Bill Ebarb

Dr. Bill Ebarb served as director of fiscal affairs and physical plant at the Louisiana School for more than twenty-five years. Prior to that, he worked for the Louisiana House of Representatives, where he researched various topics and drafted legislation. He drafted the bill that created the Louisiana school. He has published articles in newspapers and magazines regionally and nationwide. He lives in Natchitoches, Louisiana, with his wife, Sharon. They have two sons.

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© 2015 Dr. Bill Ebarb. All rights reserved.

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Published by AuthorHouse 12/16/2015

ISBN: 978-1-5049-6133-2 (sc)

978-1-5049-6134-9 (hc)

978-1-5049-6135-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: Pending

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The Honorable Jimmy D. Long

Father of the Louisiana School

DEDICATION

This history is dedicated to the honorable Jimmy D. Long, Sr., member of the Louisiana House of Representatives for 32 years, my boss, my mentor, my friend, and the Father of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.

I do not make this designation lightly. There were four men who were instrumental in the creation of the school: Long, former Governor David C. Treen, former State Senator Donald G. Kelly, and Dr. Robert Alost, the school’s first director. There is no doubt that without these men, the influence they wielded, and their drive and dedication, the school would not exist today. They all earned and deserve a title affiliated with the school, but only one can be its father.

Long originated the concept of the school, and he sold the idea to Treen. Treen took a major gamble in the last year of his term as governor, when, in a time of extremely tight money, he agreed to fund building renovations and the operational costs of the school for one year. His gamble paid off, and the school is considered one of the major triumphs of his time as governor.

Long introduced the bill that led to the creation of the school and championed the cause of the Louisiana School from that time to the present day. Long grew the school’s budget and, to the extent possible, protected it from the budget axe for decades. Kelly joined in the budget fight, and he and Long were instrumental in the effort to maintain and expand the school’s physical plant for three decades.

Alost was the architect for the project. He performed the research, developed the plan, and, as director, implemented that plan, opened the school, and nursed it along during the first four years of its life, one by himself, one with a skeleton staff, and two with students and faculty.

But it was Jimmy Long who has stood beside and supported the school in good times and bad since its inception. When Long could no longer serve as chairman of the House Education Committee, he was given his choice of assignments as a member of any other committees, and he chose those committees that could most benefit the school and the other agencies and institutions in his district.

When the school was threatened with closure, he led the charge to keep it open, and when the budget axe fell on the school time and again, as it did on other institutions, agencies, and departments throughout the state, he held the line in the legislature and with the Governor’s Office that kept the school running.

All four of the men mentioned here were crucial to the school, and all four did what they could for the school in their time, but Long has always been the one true constant who has supported the school however he could from whatever position he has held, and no institution, no person, could ask for more from a father.

DISCLAIMER

The danger of writing a history in which so many people have played a part is that you will make mistakes. Memory is a fleeting thing; that was one of the prime reasons for this endeavor. When you cannot depend upon your own memory, then you must seek documented evidence of what you claim or at least seek the input of others who have lived that history with you. I have attempted to do exactly that, so, if you find mistakes here, I am not entirely to blame.

My biggest fear is that I have excluded someone or something important to the reader. Certainly, that was not my intention, and I apologize to anyone whom I have inadvertently slighted. I relied heavily upon newspaper stories, school yearbooks, internet resources, and other written records to establish timelines and set forth facts, but not everything that has happened in the history of the Louisiana School has been documented in writing. So, I have also leaned heavily upon the spoken word and the memories of many people, and I am sure that their memories will differ from the memories of other travelers on this journey.

I am not a historian, and my writing experience does not include the writing of history.

Having attempted to distance myself from any shortcoming the reader may discover in this book, I challenge you to share your memories, your pictures, and your documents with the school so that you can participate in the on-going recording of the life of the Louisiana School.

INTRODUCTION

This is a story about something Louisiana got right. More importantly, it’s about a public high school in Louisiana that has garnered national and international attention and praise for the high quality of education it has provided to nearly 6,000 Louisiana students. This is the history of the Louisiana School for Math, Science, and the Arts.

In 1981, the Louisiana Legislature passed and Governor David C. Treen signed legislation that created a statewide residential high school for students who demonstrated exceptional academic and artistic abilities. The school was located in Natchitoches, a small central Louisiana city which was already home to Northwestern State University. Both the community and the university played a large part in the life, growth, and development of the school, and the school, in return, put Natchitoches on the global map where quality secondary education is concerned.

The Louisiana School was the second institution of its kind in the United States, but it was the first to combine a residential school for academically-gifted students and artistically-talented students in one location. Only a concept on paper in 1982, the school opened its doors to its first students barely a year later and graduated its first class a year after that.

By that time, the school had played host to college and university recruiters from across the nation, recruiters who were seeking the best students they could find for their institutions. Among those schools were the most prestigious institutions of higher education in the nation, including MIT, Cal Tech, Harvard, Yale, and all of the United States military academies. Those institutions sent their recruiters to the small Louisiana city of Natchitoches because they knew something most people in Louisiana didn’t seem to know: Louisiana has some of the best and brightest students in the nation, and, for the first time, they were gathered in one place.

Table of Contents

DEDICATION

DISCLAIMER

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 – BEGINNINGS

Chapter 2 – WE THINK WE’RE READY.

Chapter 3. THE SECOND YEAR

Chapter 4. THE REST OF THE ‘80S

Chapter 5. THE SECOND DECADE

Chapter 6. THE LOST YEARS

Chapter 7. UP TO NOW

Chapter 8. COLLEGE FAIR

Chapter 9. ARTICULATION AGREEMENTS

Chapter 10. INTRAMURALS, SPORTS, AND RECREATION

Chapter 11. TELELEARNING AND LVS

Chapter 12. DIRECTORS

Chapter 13. THE FOUNDATION

Chapter 14. THE LAW

Chapter 15. SHORT STORIES

Chapter 16. LANGIAPPE

Chapter 17. IN MEMORIAM

Chapter 18. NATCHITOCHES HIGH SCHOOL

CONCLUSION

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In 1980, a group of legislators attended an SREB conference in Hilton Head, South Carolina. While we were there, a presentation was made about a high school in North Carolina. It was a residential school for gifted and talented students. On the way back to Louisiana, I turned to Bobby Alost, who had gone with us, and I asked him, ‘Why can’t we have a school like that in Louisiana?’

-- Jimmy D. Long, Sr.

                                                       La. State Representative,

                                                      District 23

                                                      1968-2000

That was how it started.

Chapter 1 – BEGINNINGS

In 1980, State Representative Jimmy Long Sr. of Natchitoches and several members of the Louisiana House of Representatives and Senate committees on education attended the annual conference of the Southern Regional Education Board (SREB). Founded in 1948, SREB was the nation’s first interstate compact for education, and studies and reports on myriad aspects of higher education.

The SREB conference was in Hilton Head, S.C., and among the topics on the agenda was a presentation concerning a recently-opened public residential high school called the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics (NCSSM). That school was developed to serve the educational needs of academically-gifted students living throughout the state of North Carolina.

Long had invited Dr. Robert Alost, who was the Dean of Education at Northwestern State University (NSU) in Natchitoches at that time, to attend the conference. They both were present at the presentation on the NCSSM, and on their return trip to Louisiana, Long asked Alost to conduct the research necessary to determine the mechanics of developing and operating a similar school in Louisiana. One of the questions Long asked was whether instruction in academic areas and the arts could be combined in a single institution.

Alost visited 15 educational institutions throughout the nation to determine what aspects of their operations worked best and would best fit a school in Louisiana. Among the first schools he visited was NCSSM. Alost asked about the curriculum, faculty qualifications, student qualifications, housing, programs, and other concerns, and he selected what he thought would work for LSMSA.

He also visited Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Benjamin Franklin Senior High School in New Orleans, and Hunter College, one of the largest colleges in the City of New York college system.

From those institutions and others he contacted, Alost gleaned ideas for the concept of a public residential high school for Louisiana’s highest achieving students. Adding to that research, Alost drew upon his years as an educator and college dean to develop a plan for the new school.

Many of the initial aspects of LSMSA’s operation were based upon Alost’s findings, especially with respect to the residential program for an under-aged and highly intelligent student population.

The academic program would have to academically challenge students who largely had not been challenged previously and would have to provide much of the instruction in the creative and performing arts on an individualized basis. Courses would be taught at the college level, and every instructor would have to possess at least a master’s degree in his or her academic discipline. Students would have to demonstrate their academic ability before being accepted to the school, and the process of selecting students would become as much an art as a science. Academic counselors would address student questions and problems while at the school and would help students identify and matriculate to the colleges that would best meet their needs and expectations for a post secondary education.

The residential program would have to house and protect the students who would live at the school, often very far from home and away from home for an extended period for the first time in their lives. Dormitories would house not just the students, but a live-in staff of counselors who would be available at all times to address the students’ needs. That task would fall to a residential life staff whose qualifications, skills, and backgrounds would be as varied as those of the students themselves. This program would also provide for food services, student activities, and social systems for the students.

The administrative program would have to provide for all the needs of the other programs, plus ancillary needs, such as security, maintenance, physical plant, and other programs with less visibility but equal impact upon the students. The administration would have to seek funding each year and construction money whenever possible for the continued operation and growth of the school.

While Alost was conducting his research and developing a position paper regarding the establishment the school, Long was busy drumming up support for the school and seeking input from many sources.

Long’s interest in making college-level instruction available to high school students actually preceded the SREB conference in 1980. During the Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature in 1979, Long introduced House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) No. 27 which directed a committee to study alternative education programs for advanced high school students and the feasibility of establishing such a program in Louisiana… The concept of providing college-level instruction to high school students was ahead of its time. Today, dual-enrollment in high school and college courses is fairly routine.

After the SREB conference, and with the idea of an advanced high school in his mind, Long, as chairman of the House Committee on Education, instructed his staff to expand the parameters of the study to examine the feasibility of establishing a statewide residential high school for gifted and talented students. Two findings of that study were strong support among parents for the school to be located in a small city setting which did not present the distractions offered by larger municipalities and support for locating the school on the campus of a public university to provide for a greater economy of scale. Every university campus already had cafeteria and library facilities as well as dormitory, classroom, and laboratory space.

Long himself undertook some of the legwork necessary to propose and defend his idea. He visited Ben Franklin High School, McNeese State University, and the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the University of Louisiana – Lafayette, both of which had summer programs for gifted and talented students.

Long said that he was interested in what programs existed for gifted and talented students in Louisiana, and he was not surprised by what he found. According to Long, public schools provided such programs, but few were well-established or well-funded, and there were no strong gifted and talented programs serving students in the rural parishes.

Then Long began the arduous task of securing legislative and gubernatorial support for the creation of the school.

Funding for the new school was perhaps the biggest problem. The oil and gas industry in Louisiana had collapsed, and state revenues from that industry had fallen dramatically. The state budget was being examined closely for areas to cut, and some of the cuts were expected to be big. In that financial atmosphere, funding for a new entity in Louisiana was extremely doubtful.

Long went to Gov. David C. Treen and asked for funds to create the new school, presenting the results of the completed studies, and told Treen that the proposed school would place Louisiana on the cutting edge of secondary education in the nation, a rare position for the state. Long told Treen that the NCSSM was the only school of its kind in the nation. Louisiana would have the second public residential school in the nation to serve such a population, and it would be the only school to combine academics and the arts at the same institution.

At the end of their meeting, Treen committed $10 million to the renovation of the buildings needed for the school, acquisition of equipment, and operations for the first year.

During the 1981 Regular Session of the Louisiana Legislature, Rep. Long introduced House Bill No. 1592 which became Act 932 and created the Louisiana School for Gifted and Talented Children. Long shepherded the bill through the House and presented it to the Senate Education Committee. Under the rules of the legislature, Long could not present his bill on the Senate floor, so he turned to his colleague, Senator Don Kelly (District 31) of Natchitoches who handled that step of the process.

When the final votes were tallied, there was only one nay vote in the 105-member House of Representatives, and in the Senate, there were 4 or 5 no votes among the 39 senators, Long said.

The act provided that the school would be a residential institution located on the campus of a Louisiana public college or university or other appropriate existing facility which can provide the classroom, laboratory, library, dormitory, food preparation, and other services necessary for the proper operation of such school. The law was amended the next year to rename the school as the Louisiana School of Math, Science, and the Arts (LSMSA) and to establish its location as the campus of Northwestern State University (NSU) in Natchitoches. NSU had completed a major renovation of its Creative and Performing Arts complex only a year or two earlier, and that facility would be able to provide much-needed space for LSMSA arts programs.

Like universities throughout Louisiana, NSU was experiencing declining enrollments, and its budget was also declining. There was hope that locating LSMSA at NSU would provide enough economy of scale to help LSMSA get started and NSU to make the changes it needed to survive. NSU had already declared a financial exigency and had laid off a number of employees. Other serious cuts were on the horizon.

The law created a Board of Directors for the school, and it met for the first time on July 16, 1982, at the Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library on the campus of NSU. The two-day meeting focused on staff appointments and other business necessary to begin preparing LSMSA to recruit and enroll its first class of students.

State Representative Jesse C. Deen of Plain Dealing was named the first chairman of the board. Deen had been a school principal for 18 years and a school teacher before that. As a legislator for 12 years and the current vice chairman of the House Education Committee, he was intimately familiar with educational trends, legislation, and the processes that controlled both.

Mrs. Kay Coffey of New Orleans, chairman of the Louisiana Association for Gifted and Talented Children, was elected as the first vice chairman of the board.

The selection of a director for LSMSA was both a simple and difficult task. The new director would have to develop all aspects of the school with no blue print and very limited factual information upon which to base his or her decisions. The school would be unlike anything Louisiana, and almost the entire nation, had seen before, and its success or failure would be closely watched by many people both in and outside of Louisiana.

The simple part of the choice was to name a person who was already very familiar with the concept of the school and had conducted the research that helped form the basis for the writing of the legislation that created the school: Dr. Robert Alost. The difficult part of the selection

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School Director Bobby Alost and Sharon (Sturdivant) Williams discuss incoming students.

would be to convince Alost that he should leave a secure position as Dean of Education at Northwestern State University to accept a one-of-a-kind position at a fledgling high school that was unlike anything else in the United States. He would have less than a year to bring the school from concept to reality, and his resources would be very limited. The school was unproven and, with the shortage of available funding at that time, it could have a very short life.

Alost accepted the position and undertook what he called the opportunity of a lifetime. Others in the education community called it one of the biggest gambles in Louisiana at that time. He was to assume his new duties on September 1, 1982.

He took a leave of absence from his position as Dean of Education even before his appointment as director of LSMSA took effect. Alost asked for space in the Teacher Education Center (TEC) at NSU to conduct the business of the school, and, with a borrowed desk and a borrowed phone, Alost went to work, and the NSU-TEC became the first home of LSMSA.

The first students were to arrive on campus in August of 1983. During the intervening period, Alost would have to select a start-up staff, complete planning and renovation for the two dormitories, recruit and select students from throughout the state, identify and employ faculty, and purchase all the equipment, books, and supplies necessary for the operation of the school.

The race began.

Alost had to identify and employ a staff that could accomplish the enormous task before him, and he already had an idea of who those people would be.

For Deputy Director, Alost selected Stan Powell, the director of instruction and school administration for the Caddo Parish School System. Powell had opened two schools as a principal, Oak Terrace Junior High School and Captain Shreve High School, during his 26 years as an educator in Caddo Parish, so he had experience with new institutions. Having Stan Powell on the staff of LSMSA would give the school instant credibility in the public school community of Louisiana.

Lynda Tabor was Alost’s next candidate. Tabor was working at the time for the Bossier Parish School Board as a kind of trouble shooter. She was trying to turn a school around that had received poor evaluations by the state. For that task, she was assigned the title of assistant principal at the troubled school, but she was actually filling the role of curriculum coordinator. She had served as president of the Bossier Parish Teachers Association and was well-known in many areas of the state. Tabor was very detailed oriented and could well manage the tasks of overseeing the recruitment of students and the record keeping involved with the matriculation of students. Powell and Tabor could open doors that Alost might not.

The next position on Alost’s list was a Student Activities Coordinator. This would be a unique position. LSMSA would be a residential school. Students from throughout the state would live in dormitories on campus, and initially all of the students would be minors, so the school’s responsibility for these students would extend far beyond the responsibilities assumed by any traditional public school. In this regard, LSMSA would be similar to the Louisiana School for the Deaf or the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired where many of the resident students were minors.

As Alost pondered this aspect of the school’s operation, a new term entered the school’s lexicon: in loco parentis. This legal term means in place of the parent, and the administration and staff of the school would literally assume the responsibility of the students’ parents when the students lived in Natchitoches. High school juniors and seniors aged 15-17 were the norm and were to be expected, but some exceptions would be made, and at least one 13-year old student would be enrolled that first year. Finding staff to supervise such students in the dormitories would be very taxing, but finding someone to lead such a staff and to ride herd over a student body of highly intelligent, highly-motivated teenaged children would be a daunting task.

Alost reviewed many resumes from throughout the nation, bur one resume just kept coming back to the top of the pile, he said. This young lady had done it all. She’d been a teacher. She was a sponsor for the Future Business Leaders of America, and she‘d been involved in almost every aspect of the lives of the students at the high school where she taught in El Dorado, Arkansas. She would soon finish her doctorate at the University of Mississippi. Her name was Sharon Sturvivant. Alost called her a people person, and she became the first Student Activities Coordinator.

Betty Dutile was the jewel who Alost discovered working at NSU as the Accounting Supervisor for the Office of Financial Affairs. She later married Marvin Lockhart, a member of the school’s maintenance staff, and became Mrs. Betty (Dutile) Lockhart, but to the students she became known as Aunt Betty, and that name stuck.

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Business Officer Betty Lockhart takes a quick break to smile for the camera.

Alost asked Lockhart to coordinate the business operations of the school, but neither envisioned what that would eventually entail. For the next 26 years, she was intimately involved in every business operation of the school, and her work was exemplary. Everyone knew that when something had to be done, Lockhart was the person who did it, and she did it right.

Lockhart’s work load and ethic even led to a finding by the Legislative Auditor who determined that Lockhart was doing too much work. She was responsible for purchasing, personnel, payroll, and nearly every other financial and support system at the school. That finding was largely responsible for the growth of the Business Office staff over the years as at least two new positions were established to segregate the duties that Lockhart had previously performed herself.

Marsha Zulick was employed as a consultant at NSU under a grant to study college education

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Admissions Officer Marsha Zulick points to her next recruiting trip destination.

programs in Louisiana which involved a great deal of travel, and she had journeyed to every area of the state. She became a valuable asset for recruiting students. After joining LSMSA, Zulick spent much of her time on the road travelling to every public high school in Louisiana bringing the invitation to students to apply for admission. One document from that time listed nearly 400 public high schools in Louisiana, and, according to Zulick, We visited them all. Added to that staff were two secretaries, Yvonne Richardson and Anita McGee. They became pool secretaries who performed all of the duties needed by the entire staff and the board. Those duties ranged from correspondence to record keeping and everything in between.

With the staff complete, the work of getting the school ready for students moved to the front burner.

The development of a curriculum that would challenge highly motivated and academically- and artistically-gifted high school juniors and seniors became the next priority task.

Students qualifying for admission could be assumed to have completed the basic courses offered to high school sophomores, including courses in Math, Science, and the Humanities that could be identified from the state’s recommended curriculum for college preparatory students. There would be no purpose in including such courses in the curriculum.

With a few exceptions, instruction could begin with higher level classes in every academic discipline, and, with the specialized knowledge and skills the incoming faculty would possess, all disciplines could offer courses that would not be seen in other high schools.

The first course list sent to students demonstrated the advanced nature of the curriculum. The English curriculum included Historical Survey of British Literature, Studies in a Major Author, and Special Topics in American and British Literature. Foreign Languages included French 1-5, Spanish 1-4, Latin 1-4, German 1-3, Russian 1and 2, Greek, Chinese, and Japanese. Social Sciences offered courses in the Military History of the United States, Archeology, Ancient and Medieval History, Constitutional Development, American Indians, Philosophy, Logic, and the History of England 1 and 2.

Math started with Euclidian Geometry and ran through Algebra 2, Probability and Statistics, and Linear Algebra up to Differential Calculus, Integral Calculus, and Calculus of Several Variables. Computer Science included Pascal, Assembly Level Programming, and Special Projects.

The Sciences offered Advanced Biology, Evolution, Ecology, Genetics, Modern Physics, Digital Devices and Microcomputer Interfacing, Introduction to Physics with Calculus, Advanced Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry.

Each area also offered the traditional subjects found in high schools, but they were taught at the college level.

NSU courses were also offered, including Design, Drawing, Art History, Ceramics, Interior Design, Sculpture, Graphics, Band, Chorale, Chamber Choir, Orchestra, Elementary and Advanced Harmony, Music Composition, History of Music, Dance (at various levels), Photography, Theater, instrumental instruction, and many more.

The only limitations in curricular offerings would be the academic background of the faculty, the academic abilities of the students, and, of course, funding.

Alost and his staff decided to schedule classes in the same way colleges operate. Classes would be offered every hour from 8:00 a.m. until 4:00 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Classes would actually last only 50 minutes to provide students enough time to move to their next class, which would often be in another building. The instructional day on Tuesdays and Thursdays would also start at 8:00, but classes would last one hour and fifteen minutes with a 15-minute break between each class. Across the length of a semester, the combination of three one-hour classes on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays would be about equal to two Tuesday-Thursday classes lasting one hour and 15 minutes.

A more far-reaching decision was made with respect to academic graduation requirements, and this decision was facilitated by the class schedule. The State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) required the successful completion of 23 Carnegie Units (courses) for graduation and receipt of a state diploma. LSMSA required 26 Carnegie Units, and, in addition to the state diploma, the school would issue its own special diploma to those students who successfully met the school’s graduation requirements.

The task of selecting textbooks for each subject was delayed until a faculty could be selected. The faculty would be the core of the instructional program, and the instructors would be allowed to select their own texts. When the texts finally were selected, the list contained such titles as: Hodges’ Harbrace College Handbook, The Practical Stylist, The Norton Anthology of American Literature, The American Promise: A History