Vacant school properties costing taxpayers

By T.W. Starr

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    SHREVEPORT, Louisiana (KTBS) — The latest census bureau data shows Caddo Parish shrunk by about 17,000 people or 6.7% between 2010 and 2020. With shrinkage comes less children in schools, which leads to school closures and vacant properties. It’s not a new problem for the Caddo Parish School Board, but it is a costly one.

You can find them to the north, to the south, to the east and west — the Caddo Parish landscape is dotted with vacant school buildings and properties that are no longer being used by the school district. But those properties are still being paid for by taxpayers.

“Just because a property is off-line doesn’t mean we’re not still allocating funding towards that particular site. We have to maintain utilities, plumbing situations and grounds upkeep,” said Patrick Greer, Caddo School Board chief operations officer.

Last year, it cost the district a little over $150,000 to maintain the properties.

“Just because you close a particular site doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re going to be able to offload it or get it off the books in a short amount of time. Everything is dictated by what the market is doing. Unfortunately, we do have some sites that have been on the market for some time,” said Greer.

For example, an empty field on West 70th Street is where the Oak Terrace/J.B. Harville School used to stand. That piece of property hasn’t been in use since 1992. That’s nearly 30 years of maintenance costs.

There’s two more from 2012, two from 2014. There’s one on Coty Street that is pending sale. Two from 2016, two from 2017 and three from 2019.

“Our position with the school board is that they need professional expertise. They need a firm with a real handle on how to repurpose schools that are vacant,” said Bill Robertson, Broadmoor Neighborhood Association vice president.

Six of the 14 properties are for sale with the school districts real estate agent U.L. Coleman. As for how the school board deals with decisions on what to do with the properties, Greer said, “We typically have building, grounds and security committee meetings quarterly, or as needed.”

“They don’t have time to go out and do this research and investigate all these opportunities that are available to them,” said Robertson.

Research with a local real estate agent and the Caddo Parish Tax Assessors office shows these vacant properties are worth tens of millions of dollars.

“The Caddo Parish School Board is not facing this problem alone. There are school districts across the country that have declining enrollment,” said Robertson.

And, there are plenty of ideas across the country and locally about how to get these kind of properties sold or repurposed and maybe just as importantly get the maintenance costs out of the six figure range annually.

“It’s ridiculous! They’re a drag on the school boards operations and they’re a drag on the communities if they are still vacant schools,” said Robertson.

“It’s not as simple as closing a site and thinking one year down the line you’re going to have it sold and off the books. I wish it were that easy,” said Greer.

Four properties have been sold over the past 10 years including the pending sale of the Alexander Learning Center.

But, with the Caddo school district continuing to shrink, “There will be more Arthur Circles and more Mooretown Elementary’s in the coming years. You’ll have more communities that are concerned about these vacant properties in the middle of their neighborhood,” said Robertson.

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