Parents, staff, students encouraged to come to ‘Listen and Learn Tour’ with EBR schools

BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The East Baton Rouge Parish School System will continue its “Listen and Learn” tour Wednesday, Nov. 1. This tour consists of a series of town hall meetings to help spark dialogue with parents and families in the district.

A community engagement specialist we talked to said the bus staffing shortages are starting to be alleviated.

Officials are working to pull bus drivers into these meetings. The goal behind these town halls is to give students, parents, staff members and others a safe place to voice your concerns, give feedback, and talk about possible solutions to move forward.

Officials said the key topics of concern many have right now are school safety, school start and stop times and bus transportation.

A town hall organizer said they are trying to listen and consider more input. They’re trying to do something different rather than showing up to a board meeting and seeing things turn explosive.

“Show up first,” said Geno McLaughlin, a community engagement specialist. “One of the first ones were sparsely attended so we want to have more people show up and ask questions, tough questions, there’s no question that’s too hard as long as there’s no threats, you can come into that building and we can be productive.”

The goal behind these town halls is to give students, parents, staff members and others a safe place to voice your concerns, give feedback, and talk.

He said there wasn’t any resolution that was reached from the last meeting, but hopes that as they continue to have these meetings, they will be able to take the next step and find a solution.

The next meeting is Nov. 6 and then again on Nov. 9 from 5:30 to 7 p.m.

More meetings will follow after that.

You can find a location that works best for you by going to ebrschools.org. They’re listed on the homepage.

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