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BOGALUSA, La. – The Bogalusa City School Board has announced various upgrades they are making to its schools. These upgrades include beautification, new equipment as well as safety protocols and equipment.. 

When it comes to beautification, the landscaping surrounding the schools will be upgraded to improve the physical appearance of the city schools. There will also be new cafeteria equipment installed to help staff prepare meals for students. 

The largest portion of upgrades have to do with safety. The most noticeable change to the community will be that all schools are going to have one point of entry. This will mean that visitors will have one entrance into the school instead of being able to come inside through several doors around the school. 

“The social climate has changed, so therefore we have to do our due diligence in making sure that we put in the necessary protocols to protect our students and our staff,” said Byron Hurst, the superintendent of Bogalusa City Schools. “That comes from making sure that our campuses all have a single point of entry and are not as open to the public as they normally would be.”

In the past, they have had an officer stationed at the school. “At the highschool we now have a School Resource Officer full time that’s dedicated to us,” Hurst said. Our kids and employees want to be in a safe environment and we have to ensure, as a school board, that they are in a safe environment. 

There will be panic buttons installed in classrooms and a device called Halos in the restrooms. According to Hurst, the Halo device will be able to detect vaping and smoking in the bathrooms, without recording any video of the area. It will also be able to detect fighting and notify the appropriate staff. The school will also be implementing Crime Stoppers to report bullying and other crimes. 

Hurst said, “Ideally we would build a new school with all these safeguards and security, but we aren’t in a position to do that, so we have to take our existing buildings and beef up the overall safety.”

Included in the upgrades is a new website for Bogalusa City Schools, and all schools in the district. “It brings us into the 21st century,” Hurst said. “Today in the information age everyone has all the information they need in the palm of their hand. As for the school system, we had a website, it was just lacking in functionality. It needed to make sure that parents and students knew how to get to where they needed to go to find the things that they needed.”

The new website has a mass of features, which include reporting bullying, registering a student for classes, seeing bus routes and so much more. You can see it at www.bogschools.org.