Over the last two years, I have written about the need and the desire to make Fair Park into a medical feeder school. The truth is that the school should never have been changed from a high school to a middle school. That was one of the mistakes among many that the Caddo Parish School Board has made over the last decade.

Now, the bureaucrats who work for the state want to come in and make the school a charter middle school that will be managed by an entity whose main goal is to make money, not necessarily to educate children. That is the nature of the charter school business model.

Fair Park High School was once one of the jewels of education in Shreveport, and now it has been relegated to the whims of overpaid bureaucrats in Baton Rouge who have no connection with the school or its history, and that is unfortunate for the students and former students at the school whose memories are real and deserving of recognition.

The school has a rich history and has graduated some of Shreveport’s most prominent citizens. Today, there are alumni organizations and former students who are doing everything they can to preserve the history of the school. They have even retrieved artifacts that were just thrown away and left to deteriorate. Fair Park certainly deserves better than that.

Now, the Caddo Parish School Board has decided to acquiesce to the demands of the state school board and allow them to shut down schools and relocate students to other schools that are not much better than the schools they are leaving from. The school board did not put up much of a fight for the schools that are being closed.

Instead of making Fair Park a charter middle school, the school board should consider making it into a charter high school, whose mission would be to supply hospitals with well-trained, hands-on students who could fill many of the job vacancies that exist in healthcare.

The charter medical high school would establish a school of excellence, a full-time complete medical high school that would address the needs of the community in numerous ways. It would be a genuine educational opportunity for the region.

There must be a willingness to think outside the box if we are going to attract the types of jobs that are needed to improve the quality of life in Shreveport. The goal is to establish a full time complete medical professions high school on the Fair Park campus near area hospitals and training facilities.

Superintendent Lamar Goree, who was highest paid public official in the parish, presided over some of the worst schools in Louisiana, and yet, he was continually rewarded with new contracts and big pay raises. Now, he is gone, and the citizens of Caddo Parish are left in a situation where the state has decided that it is going to close schools and move students.

There has been a lot of research done on this issue, and there is no better time than now to move forward with an idea whose time has come and offers a lot of opportunity for students who want to work in the healthcare industry. There are many openings for nurses, therapists, medical technicians, and other positions.

The school would provide excellent opportunities for students, workforce and economic development, community involvement, revitalization of a struggling community and bring pride to the city and parish.

A charter medical high school could provide a permanent pipeline of Workforce and Economic Development for the Shreveport area. As the population ages and with advancements in medical treatments, there is a great need now and in the future for a trained health care workforce.

With a higher skilled workforce comes higher salaries, increase in the tax base, higher standard of living, revitalization of the area and genuine hope for a better future for our students and citizens.

The plan would also establish a Medical Corridor, the jewel of our community, starting with the Shriners Hospital, St. Jude Children’s Hospital, LSU Health, Biomedical Research Institute, Ochsner LSU all on Kings Highway and Willis-Knighton Health System facilities on Kings Highway and Greenwood Road.

The school’s campus is uniquely located on Greenwood Road to serve as the anchor for Shreveport Medical Corridor with its proximity to medical facilities, providing medical professionals access to the campus for instructional purposes and the access for students to medical training facilities, saving valuable time for students and instructors.

Shreveport should not want to fall behind or lose a driving force in our economy, the Medical Hub. It is a tremendous asset to this area. The University of Texas is opening a medical school in Tyler, Texas this year, less than one hundred miles away, which will undoubtedly draw students from this area.

As I said earlier, instead of making Fair Park a charter middle school, the school board should consider making it into a charter high school for medical professions, whose mission would be to supply hospitals with well-trained, hands-on students who could fill many of the job vacancies that exist in healthcare in Shreveport. And that’s my take. smithren@aol.com

This article originally appeared on Monroe News-Star: School board should consider making Fair Park a charter medical high school