LaPlace school demolition contract clears committee

The demolition contract for Lake Pontchartrain Elementary School has cleared committee and comes up for a vote of the St. John the Baptist Parish School Board on Thursday (March 19). That's 2 and 1/2 years afterHurricane Isaac's flooding destroyed the LaPlace school.

The board postponed votingon the contract March 3, saying the lowest responsive bidder, ARC Abatement 1 Ltd., hadn't shown compliance with the school system's disadvantaged business enterprise policy. The company submitted a bid of $615, 278 to raze the 26-year-old school.

Ali Burl, chairman of the board's Land and Facilities Committee, said Wednesday that the company has complied with the policy. The committee met Tuesday and approved the contract, he said.

"Their documents are in order," Burl said. "They came in at a very reasonable rate, and we'll make a recommendation to the full board that they be awarded the contract."

Board members have come under fire from parents in the past two years because of the pace of bringing Lake Pontchartrain Elementary and East St. John High Schoolin Reserve back online. For more than a year after the 2012 hurricane, both projects stalled as the board bickered over awarding construction contracts.

In January, the School Board implemented a disadvantaged business enterprise policy that's aimed at helping minority- and women-owned businesses get construction contracts. It requires firms that respond to bid proposals or contract with the school system to name a qualified disadvantaged firm that will be working on the project, or demonstrate a good-faith effort to hire such a company.

If the board approves the demolition contract Thursday, a notice to proceed would be issued within two weeks and demolition work started in April, Burl said. "People should start seeing trucks going over there, and the building starting to come down," in early April, he said.

The school has been closed since Isaac flooded it. Its students, from pre-kindergarten through eighthgrade, are being taught at East St. John Elementary School in LaPlace.

The School Board plans to build a new school, estimated to cost $22 million, at the Lake Pontchartrain Elementary site on U.S. 51. Opening is projected at the start of the 2017-18 academic year.

East St. John High, also closed since being damaged by Isaac, remains on track to re-open this fall, Burl said. Contractors are working to brick the front of the main building, and board members are planning a visit, possibly next week. "They just wanted to see the status of how things are going," Burl said.

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LaPlace school demolition contract clears committee