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Capitol High School students return to class as they adjusts to new building
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BATON ROUGE - Students at Capitol High School started the new school year in a new building on Thursday.
"We love our building at 1000 North 23rd Street. But it just wasn't conducive for what our kids needed," Principal Brandon Fontenot said.
The old Capitol High School building now sits empty, with future plans for the building still pending. Students will now be learning in the old Capitol Middle School building, merging the middle and high schools.
"It was extremely difficult to make a tough decision but sometimes when you're making decisions that are best for children, you have to be willing to have the courage to do what's best," Superintendent LaMont Cole said.
It took the school six weeks to get the building ready for students. There was a lot of planning involved, and the superintendent put it all in Principal Fontenot's hands.
"The first thing he challenged me to do is to keep those two groups separate, middle school and high school because safety always comes first," Fontenot said.
The school is big enough to separate the students by hallways.
"The seventh graders are going to have their own hall, the eighth graders are going to have their own hall, and then the high school is going to have two halls to the back of our campus," Fontenot added.
Aside from the big move, Capitol is also one of the schools testing out new start times.
"Well, it should take care of our attendance problem, hopefully, right? Because the research has shown that kids perform better and we need them to perform better with a later start time," Fontenot said.
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