BATON ROUGE — Students in East Baton Rouge Parish start school on Thursday, and Superintendent LaMont Cole said families can expect this year to be the best one yet.

“We want to give a very robust academic experience for our families. So, we’re excited about every aspect we’re doing,” Cole said.

This year, every middle and high school will have a resource officer on campus all day. The district is increasing the presence of EVOLV weapon detectors to eight high schools and also expanding security technology.

“We’re going to look at this new equipment called Rhino equipment, which is supposed to automatically barricade doors in the event of an open shooter activity,” Cole said.

Cole said this year, only 79 schools will be in use, and the nine other schools will be utilized as office space. 

“Bernard Terrace is being used. We moved our ESS Department there. Eva Lagard is being used because we moved our Child Welfare and Attendance office there,” Cole said. “The old Ryan Elementary is being used because we had some students in the alternative school, which was in pretty rough condition, so we moved some students there.”

Cole said there are currently only 72 teacher vacancies this year, and class sizes will be determined by the specific academic program.

“We try to staff at 27 to one, so depending on the academic programming at some of these institutions, it's going to dictate the class sizes,” he said. 

One thing parents can expect this year is the focus on communication.

Cole said the district is implementing a customer service app called “Let’s Talk”.

“Using AI technology for customer service at school isn’t commonly seen, so our 'Let’s Talk' initiative is really exciting and really interactive,” Cole said. “The other thing is the district-wide dashboard that we’ve implemented for families, and community members can keep up with what’s exactly happening at all of our schools.”