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Lafayette Parish board hears hours of public comment after motion to take KOMO High School offline
Summary
Board member Britt Lachel moved to take KOMO High School offline for renovation and repurpose as a career academy; hundreds of students, teachers and community members testified against the plan during a multi-hour public comment period. The transcript ends before a final vote on the motion was recorded.
The Lafayette Parish School Board opened a contentious public comment period after a motion to take KOMO High School offline beginning with the 2026–27 school year was introduced by board member Britt Lachel and seconded by Chad Darmmo. The motion, as read to the meeting, would repurpose the KOMO campus to house vocational and career-center programs.
Supporters of KOMO — students, alumni, teachers and family members — filled the meeting and lined up to speak during the two-minute public-comment slots set by the board. “We are a B school currently that is 0.4 points away from becoming an A school,” said Cullen Gravia, a third-generation educator and community member who asked the board to delay action and allow a targeted improvement plan. Teachers and parents warned that displacing roughly 600–700 students would worsen overcrowding at surrounding high schools and harm specialized programs.
Several speakers described KOMO as a tight-knit community whose students benefit from stable relationships with staff and concentrated supports. “If my kids get parcelled out to another school, they cannot survive in inclusion,” said Danielle Henry, who teaches KOMO’s LEAP/ACT inclusion classes and recounted students’ progress in district assessments after joining those programs. Students and coaches said athletics and extracurricular programs — including a growing band program and recent on-field investments — would be damaged if the school’s student body were split among other campuses.
Commenters raised logistical and equity concerns: longer bus rides, fewer opportunities for leadership and extracurricular participation at larger campuses, and the potential loss of carefully built academic gains. Several speakers asked the board to phase any change, to tie a closure timeline to measurable improvement goals, or simply to table the motion to allow more study. “Closing the school that is improving and succeeding sends the wrong message,” said one student.
Board members followed Robert’s Rules during the session, limited individual comments to two minutes because of the crowd and paused for a recess partway through the testimony. The meeting transcript ends while public comment is ongoing; there is no recorded final vote on item 3.5 in the provided transcript.
