Jefferson Parish high schoolers attended a student-organized town hall this past Saturday to press school board candidates on three problems they say shape their daily lives: buses that never show up, classrooms led by inexperienced or absent teachers, and long security lines caused by the district's clear-backpack rule. Of the 14 candidates running for the parish's nine open school board seats, only one, John Cunningham, showed up to answer questions directly from students.
The forum was organized by the Student Action Movement, a Jefferson Parish student advocacy group led by Victor Romero, a senior at Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy in Westwego. As reported by NOLA.com, Romero attended the student town hall in New Orleans on Saturday, October 10, 2026, where the group pushed candidates to address unreliable bus service, inexperienced teachers, accommodations for students with disabilities, and campus security. Most of the students who showed up to question candidates are too young to vote in the November 3 election themselves, according to the same report.
The Student Action Movement itself grew out of local student walkouts earlier this year into a multi-school network across the parish, per The Times-Picayune. Romero founded the group in early 2026 to organize high schoolers around education equity and civic engagement, a mission that collided directly with an election cycle in which every seat on the board is up for grabs and the candidates who will set district policy are, for now, mostly unaccountable to the students whose school days they shape.
No-Show Buses Still Costing Kids Class Time
Transportation complaints dominated much of the forum. Chris Bradstreet, a senior at West Jefferson High School, said several of his friends missed multiple days of school this year because their bus simply never arrived, and he called for more transparency from the district about why buses go missing. Classmate Chris Houston said he has missed two school days this semester for the same reason, telling the forum that bus arrival times are inconsistent and that he has walked home on multiple occasions because the after-school bus failed to show.
District officials have attributed the bus disruptions to a driver shortage, and the problem is not new — NOLA.com's reporting notes the district has struggled with late and canceled buses for years, with the resulting gaps in service costing students class time. The strain on Jefferson Parish's bus system surfaced again in a different form this past August, when a bus carrying 46 students collided on the West Bank Expressway in Marrero, sending 15 students for medical evaluation.
Teacher Shortages Push Students Into Online Classes
Sebastian DeFraites, a senior at Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy, told the forum that high teacher turnover and limited classroom experience are hurting grades and creating a disconnect between students and the adults teaching them. Sadeel Abed, a senior at West Jefferson High School, said some teachers leave for other districts offering higher pay, and that West Jefferson does not have enough teachers to cover every core subject — a gap that forces some students into online coursework instead of in-person instruction. Abed said online students may end up with lower grades and less focus than they would get from a teacher in the room.
The district has reported progress on staffing even as students describe the gaps they still feel day to day. Jefferson Parish Schools had 70 unfilled teaching positions last year, down sharply from 209 unfilled positions during the 2022-23 school year, according to the district's figures cited by NOLA.com. To keep chipping away at that number, Jefferson Parish Schools has a paid apprenticeship program for aspiring educators.
Money remains the backdrop to the staffing fight. Jefferson Parish voters narrowly rejected a 10.89-mill property tax in December 2024 that would have raised $48 million a year and lifted certified teacher starting salaries from $51,800 to $60,100, per the Bureau of Governmental Research. A 5% raise was tied to savings from school consolidations.
Backpack Checks And Special Education Gaps
Security checkpoints drew their own round of frustration. Jefferson Parish Schools requires students in grades 4-12 to carry clear backpacks, with security guards inspecting bags each morning as students arrive; district officials say the policy is meant to keep weapons or other contraband out of schools. Romero told the forum that the checks create long entrance lines that can make students late for class. The clear-bag rule itself traces back to 2022, when the district first introduced the policy for athletic and stadium events before expanding similar checks to regular school-day entrances, according to Crescent City Sports.
Ace Christiansen, a junior at Patrick F. Taylor Science and Technology Academy, raised a different concern: both Christiansen and their brother have Individualized Education Programs specifying services they are federally entitled to receive under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which requires districts to provide a free appropriate public education to eligible students. Christiansen said their family had to follow up repeatedly with the district last school year just to ensure those services were actually delivered, describing the experience as difficult.
One Candidate Shows Up As Election Nears
All nine seats on the Jefferson Parish School Board are on the November 3 nonpartisan primary ballot, with a possible runoff set for December 12 if no candidate wins a majority outright, according to Ballotpedia. Fourteen candidates are on the November 3 ballot, but Cunningham was the only one who appeared at the student forum to field questions in person.
Jefferson Parish Schools is Louisiana's largest public school district, serving more than 47,000 students. That scale means the bus routing, staffing and security questions raised at Saturday's forum touch tens of thousands of families on both banks of the Mississippi River, and the board elected next month will be the one deciding how, or whether, to address them.
