First peek: OPSB starting new year with new offices – The News Star

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The new Ouachita parish school board building in West Monroe, La. is set to be fully functional by the end of January as staff settles in to the new space. (Photo: Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star)

Just before the winter break, the lobby of 1600 N. Seventh St., West Monroe, was stacked high with boxes the kind for moving, not gifts.

The Ouachita Parish Schools administrative offices are moving under a single roof, and the transition is set to be complete by mid-January.The first meeting in the updated building will be a special meeting at noon Jan. 6.

Superintendent Don Coker is proud of the new space. He can point to the purpose almost every closet, nook and cranny will serve.

"The space is great, and I like to see this as not just a central office but a training facility for all of our people," he said.

The formerOuachita Parish Alternative Center and West Monroe Junior High School campus has been renovated into state-of-the-art office space with classrooms and computer labs for staff training dotted through the complex.

Everything was designed to work together and make things easier.

"A lot of thought was put into how this was when you take a school and you gut the entire thing and then you build it back one step at a time trying to figure out how you coordinate all of this stuff. It's huge," Coker said.

The new board room at the remodeled Ouachita Parish School Board building in West Monroe, La.(Photo: Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star)

Once people are buzzed in the front door, a hallway to the left leads to Coker's office and personal conference rooms and the cafeteria.

Going straight, visitors will find the elevators, then the board room. Behind the board room, members have a smaller conference room specifically for executive sessions.

Taking a right from the lobby will lead straight to the most visited offices: retirement, leave, insurance and payroll.

Then the business offices are laid out in ways that keep departments together while sharing work rooms and printers. Every department has its own break room.

The DARE and truancy officers with the Ouachita Parish Sheriffs Office will have their own space with an external exit at the end of a wing. (The facility is secure and requires digital fobs to swipe in each door.)

Upstairs, there are other departments andtraining space, computer labs and additional storage. They've included a media room with a green wall for photos and digital video training for students too.

Media center workers and IT will be in another building in the same complex.

The new Ouachita Parish School Board building in West Monroe, La. will feature tables designed and made by the district's high schools. This table was built at West Ouachita High School.(Photo: Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star)

All the furniture from the old offices has been brought to the new building, and students at parish high schoolsare building tables for conference rooms around the complex.

Coker said they also plan to hang students' art around the buildings.

The best bargain in the whole development, he joked was the sod out front. Landscaping wasn't in the budget, but West Monroe High School had borrowed money from the board to put down a new turf practice field. They moved the grass to the new office.

The only place everything was not accounted for was the mail room. Each school has a letter box, as does each department in the new building.

"We haven't figured out what we're doing with thoseyet," Coker said, grinning andpointing to a bank of cubbies against one wall.

It's a new look, but history hasn't been abandoned. The West Monroe Junior High School wall plaque is hanging near the secondary entrance on the front of thebuilding.

Parts of the building keep vintage elements of the building in sight, like painting original brickwork to blend with new drywall. The look merges both elements.

"I'm thinking that down the road, this is going to be a cost saving measure for the entire district," Coker said.

They'll be maintaining fewer buildings, as a star, and there are built-in energy efficiencies in the redesigned offices, such as overhead lights that adjust based on the amount of daylight in the room.

The rooms are spacious and most of have lots of natural light. (In 30 years of administration, this is the first time Coker has had a window in his office.)

Ouachita Parish School Board Superintendent Don Coker sits at his desk in the new school board building in West Monroe, La. on Dec. 19.(Photo: Nicolas Galindo/The News-Star)

The new facility gives the district multiple spaces for events they'd previously held at churches. Coker said they can accommodate 700 teachers at one time in the entire central office.Being able to speak to 100 employees in one room like this is something they've never been able to do.

There are plans to start serving meals out of the cafeteria to employees who aren't based ata school. The goal is to make it self-sustaining without adding extra cost to the district.

Coker assumed his role in 2015. He said he'd been thinking of this project for several years and timing was everything. OPAS, now call Ouachita Parish Academy for Learning, students had to be moved, and some employees had to be relocated around the district to make room while the buildings were being renovated.

Now they're all coming home.

"What I'm having to do is to take four families and blend them into one, and that's going to be my Iwouldn't say challenge but that's going to be something that we're going to be working toward," Coker said.

He feels humble and proud that he pulled it together.

"I'm tired, but I'm happy."

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First peek: OPSB starting new year with new offices - The News Star