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.