Charter school will be built by start of 2024 school year

The first target date to open a new charter school in the northern part of the parish was August of 2023. Because it took more than a year to find land to build the school on, the new target date is now August of 2024.
This week the Vermilion Charter Foundation Inc. announced that land has been purchased and the charter school has a name, including a mascot.
The name of the new charter school will be called Vermilion Charter Academy Bulldogs. The school board for the charter school looked at different mascot names and then voted on the Bulldogs, the old mascot name for Maurice High School.
Bridget Winters, who is the president of the school board for the charter school, said the charter school will be located at the intersection of Hwy. 92 and Hwy. 343. That intersection is west of Maurice and a couple of miles north of the North Vermilion High School campus.
Construction for the school will begin this year and is expected to be ready when school starters in 2024.
The school will be an elementary school for students kindergarten through eight grade and will house around 800 students.
Charter School USA will build the new charter school. The same company built the charter school in Youngsville four years ago.
It is the same company that built the high school, Lafayette Renaissance Charter Academy in Youngsville.
The school will be a type 2 charter school.
As a type 2 charter school, the school would have to accept students from outside the parish. But, the charter commission planned for this contingency. The application was based on the overcrowding of existing schools. So, they put restrictions that any students outside of the parish could only come to the school if there were vacancies after Vermilion Parish students were taken care of.
Back in March of 2021, Charter Schools USA representative Greg Theriot, a former parish teacher, spoke to the school board about the charter school and why one was needed.
Theriot said a new school needs to be built to ease the overcrowding in the Maurice area.