About 700 pre-K through eighth-grade students are now settling into a brand-new $48 million campus on Macon Street in Metairie, where Jefferson Parish school leaders and students marked the official opening of Bunche-Washington STEM School this month. The students have been in the building for about a month, the product of a merger that folded Washington Elementary into what was previously the Ralph Bunche Elementary campus.
The new school did not appear out of nowhere. As reported by WDSU, Bunche-Washington resulted from a merger and districtwide school consolidations that Jefferson Parish completed in 2023, part of a broader effort that closed and consolidated several schools across the district. According to Design Engineering, Inc., the campus itself was designed by Grace Hebert Curtis Architects and includes collaborative pod learning spaces along with safety enhancements built into the $48 million project.
A Merger Born of Shrinking Enrollment
District officials have pointed to low enrollment as the main reason behind the closures and mergers reshaping Jefferson Parish schools, per the station's report. Districtwide enrollment fell from 50,500 students in 2018 to about 45,000 in 2025, a decline the district cites as the driving force behind consolidations like the one that created Bunche-Washington.
James Gray said the district had to make difficult decisions to provide the best education for future students, adding that future children should have the best educational opportunities, according to the same account. The Bunche-Washington merger traces back to the 2023 Infrastructure and Efficiency Plan, approved by the Jefferson Parish School Board on April 5, 2023, in response to declining districtwide enrollment, as reported by WWL-TV. That 2023 plan affected roughly 13% of the district's students — about 6,100 children at the time — and included closing or consolidating seven schools, including Grace King High School and Gretna Middle School, according to Biz New Orleans.
More Transitions Still Ahead
The reshuffling isn't finished. George Cox Elementary is scheduled to close in 2027, per the school district, and the Jefferson Parish School Board may consider further school closures if enrollment continues to decline. Jefferson Parish Schools has said George Cox's building will later serve as temporary housing for St. Ville Elementary students once the Gretna campus holds its final fifth-grade moving-on ceremony.
Ahead of the 2026–2027 school year, the district also redrew middle-school boundaries, reassigning students within the Bunche-Washington boundary who had previously attended T.H. Harris Middle School to the new PK-8 facility, according to Jefferson Parish Schools. To help families adjust to the shifting attendance lines, the district provided uniform vouchers through June 2026 to students moving into consolidated campuses like Bunche-Washington.
A Bridge Over Airline Highway
Jefferson Parish School District plans to build a pedestrian bridge on Airline Highway that will connect directly to the Bunche-Washington campus and ease traffic congestion, with an expected opening in late 2027. The project, formally named the Bunche Elementary Airline Crossing, is being engineered by Design Engineering, Inc., which describes the crossing as designed to improve pedestrian safety and relieve local traffic congestion.
The bridge has drawn state-level backing as well. The Louisiana Legislature allocated capital outlay funding to the Jefferson Parish School Board across multiple sessions — $400,000 in fiscal year 2024 and $500,000 in fiscal year 2025 — specifically earmarked for planning and construction of the Airline Highway crossing, according to records reviewed via LegiScan.
Jefferson Parish Schools views the Bunche-Washington project as an investment in education, and district leaders frame the consolidations, boundary changes and new construction as pieces of a long-term efficiency push. The district remains the largest public school system in Louisiana, serving roughly 45,000 students across more than 70 campuses, a scale that underscores just how many families are touched by each round of closures and mergers still to come.
