When the current school year ends on May 23, nine public schools in Baton Rouge will cease operations and, in the process, five school buildings will become vacant.
These newly vacant facilities, emptied thanks to a vote last week by the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board, join at least five other vacant school buildings and several more vacant properties where the schools have been demolished.
This glut of unused and underused properties is challenging local leaders to figure out ways to prevent these locales from devolving into blight and sources of criminal activity as has happened to other vacant school properties in the recent past…