NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Neighborhood advocates are hopeful as the Orleans Parish School Board announced a deal that would allow Lycée Français to occupy the French Quarter’s only school and return schoolchildren to the neighborhood after moving out of the area of ​​a primary school. last year.

The Orleans Parish School Board, at its meeting this week, recommended moving an Uptown campus (on Patton Street) of the French immersion school to the French Quarter’s iconic “Little Red School” .

Homer Plessy Elementary School had left the buildingremoving the French Quarter’s only remaining school last year after district officials said $15 million in maintenance work was needed to bring the building up to operational standards.

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The district planned a $3.5 million capital improvement project for the building, forcing Homer Plessy to move to the 7th District’s McKenna Building at the end of the 2022-2023 school year.

In December 2023, Plessy executives said the relocation would be permanent.

“We have two kids that go to school and one that we were hoping would go to school in the French Quarter,” said French Quarter resident and business owner Chris Olsen. “It’s definitely been a big change since they moved. There are a lot fewer people on this side of the neighborhood, which is sort of the more residential side.

Defenders like Olsen were in limbo as the French Quarter has remained without a school since Plessy’s move.

They now hope that schoolchildren will once again roam the streets of the French Quarter.

“It’s just the feeling of the neighborhood that’s changing.” We have tourists but they often want to know that we have people living and working right here in the District. It was nice to have the school here so the kids could run around during the day,” Olsen said.

“For people who love the French Quarter and people who live here or in the area and want to send their kids here, there’s really nothing like being immersed in it every day.”

A representative for Lycée Français said details of moving about 470 elementary students into the building are still being worked out and could not comment further.

At the district meeting earlier this week, officials said Lycée Français would cover costs associated with the building and final repairs.

They officially announced the new site in a release Friday afternoon.

“It would symbolically be a great boon for the city,” said Scott Tilton, executive director of the New Orleans Foundation for Francophone Cultures and a board member of Vieux Carré Owners, Residents and Associates.

“I think with our cultural institution that works in French, I think with organizations like the Historic New Orleans Collection that has all these archives in the city, I think there is a real idea that you are working to bring French back to the French Quarter,” he said.

“Using the French Quarter as a kind of experience outside of the classroom, but it’s in your backyard. This is almost unprecedented.

The Lycée Français is expected to move forward for the 2025-2026 school year.

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