Louisiana
Elementary school next to controversial Louisiana chemical plant to shut down next year
An elementary school a few hundred feet from an industrial plant that emits a likely cancer-causing chemical will close next year, the St. John the Baptist Parish School Board voted on Thursday, a landmark decision that follows a long push for action by environmental and community activists.
The 300 pre-kindergarteners through fourth graders who attend Fifth Ward Elementary School in Reserve will be relocated to two schools in the district.
The school board’s decision to close the school came amid a slew of legal battles involving the future of Fifth Ward Elementary, as well as the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Denka Performance Elastomer, which neighbors the elementary school, is the only facility in the country to emit chloroprene, classified as a likely carcinogen by the EPA.
The school is also in a U.S. census tract with the highest risk of cancer from air pollution in the country, according to an EPA report. The federal agency sent a letter in 2022 to the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality suggesting that Black residents in the area were subjected to adverse health impacts because of Denka.
Average chloroprene emissions this August at the two fenceline monitors closest to the school were more than four times the figure the EPA cautioned against in its 2022 letter.
The Tokyo-based synthetic rubber manufacturing company makes products such as gloves and wetsuits.
The school board meeting grew tense at times, as members tussled over the future of the school and whether the planning committee that had initially approved the closure had been transparent.
Raydel Morris, who represents the district where Fifth Ward is located, opposed shuttering it, and raised concerns over the physical building being left to decay after the school closed. He added that if the impetus for closing the school was for “chemical reasons,” moving students to one of the nearby schools wouldn’t affect their risks from air pollution.
“We’re taking them from the front yard to the backyard,” he said.
Most of the heated discussions revolved around transparency and economics. The school has a declining enrollment and operates at less than 50 percent capacity, one board member noted.
But the legal battles and the nearby chemical plant loomed large. Nia Mitchell-Williams, who voted in favor of the school closure, noted that if they didn’t make a decision, the board would be leaving Fifth Ward’s future in the hands of a judge.
“That’s the real elephant in the room,” Mitchell-Williams said.
The former segregated Black school will see its final term this year, and in the 2025-2026 school year, students will either attend East St. John Preparatory or LaPlace Elementary. The motion passed on a vote 7-4.
After the closure, East St. John Preparatory will be renamed as Fifth Ward Preparatory, to preserve the name and history of the originally all-Black segregated school. Mitchell-Williams proposed this motion at the request of alumni of the school, she said.
Future of Fifth Ward
The vote comes after a federal judge in New Orleans in late October heard arguments in a desegregation case against the St. John school board. Lawyers with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund argued that Fifth Ward should be shut down and its students should be moved to LaPlace Elementary School four miles away.
While the civil rights lawyers applauded the move to shut down the school, they opposed the school board’s plan to divide the students between East St. John Preparatory Academy, a middle school, and LaPlace Elementary.
Victor Jones said that East St. John Prep is still located too close to the Denka plant and is not designed for the younger elementary school children. The Legal Defense Fund wants to see all the Fifth Ward students and faculty kept together and moved to LaPlace Elementary. The lawyers also want Fifth Ward to be shut down immediately.
“We won’t be satisfied until the school is closed,” Jones said.
Louisiana
Mom whose 3 children were killed in Louisiana mass shooting still has bullet lodged in face — and sometimes thinks kids are alive
The mother of three of the eight children massacred by deranged Army veteran dad Shamar Elkins in Louisiana still has a bullet lodged in her head and is struggling with her memory — sometimes believing her kids are still alive, according to a relative.
Christina Snow, the girlfriend of 31-year-old Shamar Elkins, was shot in the face early Sunday when the former National Guardsman went on a shooting rampage at two nearby homes in Shreveport.
Three of Snow’s children she shared with Elkins — Braylon Snow, 5, Khedarrion Snow, 6, and Sariahh Snow, 11 — were killed in their home.
Elkins fired a bullet through Snow’s nose which is lodged in her head, and doctors aren’t ready to risk surgery, according to her cousin Jamarckus Snow.
The mom is now dealing with heartbreaking memory loss about the fate of her kids.
“One day, she’ll remember they’re dead. I heard yesterday she woke up and was like, ‘I got to get my kids ready for school.’ She’ll lose memory of what happened,” he told NBC News.
“One day, she’ll know, and the next day, she’s thinking her kids is still there.”
Follow the latest updates on the Louisiana father who killed 8 children in Shreveport shooting:
Elkins fatally shot his seven children — the three he shared with Snow and his four daughters with his wife, Shaneiqua Pugh: Jayla Elkins, 3, Shayla Elkins, 5, Kayla Pugh, 6, and Layla Pugh, 7.
He also killed Mar’Kaydon Pugh, 10, the son of his wife’s sister, who was staying at their house.
The vet turned his gun on Pugh and Snow, too, severely wounding both women, who are still in the hospital.
Elkins shot himself in the driveway of his former military mentor as law enforcement closed in.
The motive for the shooting remains unclear, but Elkins was suffering from mental health issues and was scheduled to appear in court on Monday after Pugh asked him for a divorce.
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
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