Joey Richard likes to say that he conducts research from behind his barber chair.
It’s where Richard, the owner of Holliwood Cutz barber shop in Opelousas, deduced that the local school system is shrinking.
“Every year I’ve been in business,” he said, “I’m cutting less and less kids.”
Like nearly every other school district in Louisiana, St. Landry Parish has seen enrollment fall as families have fewer kids, move away or opt for charters or homeschool. Yet even as the school system lost roughly a quarter of its students over the past decade, its workforce grew by nearly 20%…