Second campus of Good Shepherd on horizon

By Christine Bordelon
Clarion Herald

A contribution at the end of 2023 to The Good Shepherd School by Gayle Benson, Saints owner and New Orleans Pelicans governor, will jumpstart the school’s expansion to a second location on Desire Parkway in New Orleans. 

Good Shepherd School president and CEO Tommy Moran said he was thrilled to open the Gayle and Tom Benson Good Shepherd School Giving Hope Campus for impoverished children in kindergarten through seventh grade. 

“At a time when inner-city Catholic schools are closing at an alarming rate throughout the country, Good Shepherd School is defying the odds and opening a second campus in the Desire-Florida community,” Moran said. “When someone like Mrs. Gayle Benson … believes in and supports the mission, it serves as a catalyst for others to embrace the mission.”

Many benefactors
Moran also is grateful for the generosity of Troy and Tracy Duhon, founders of the Giving Hope Foundation, which runs the Giving Hope Community Center nearby, and other foundations and individuals for making Good Shepherd’s growth possible. 

The second campus, a five-minute drive from the first, will comprise 24,000 square feet of modular buildings – already at the new site – that will be converted into an elementary school resembling the original Agriculture Street Good Shepherd School.

Good Shepherd School has obtained state approval for the Giving Hope campus, but since the new campus isn’t open yet, two students are in school at the Agriculture Street site. Construction, utility installation and proper permitting are delaying the opening to additional students for another six to nine months, Moran said. 

The structures and the land were provided by the Duhons, and through a user agreement, the Giving Hope Foundation’s Community Center gym, afterschool and summer programs will be available to Good Shepherd School Giving Hope students.

Progress since founding
Good Shepherd School was founded on Baronne Street in 2001 by the late Jesuit Father Harry Tompson to help low-income urban youth break the cycle of generational financial poverty and “reach their potential by providing them with an extended day, year-round, quality faith-based education.” It opened with one grade a year until seventh grade was added. The new location will follow that model, Moran said.

Good Shepherd schools tout low student-teacher ratios in the classroom, an extended-day curriculum that focuses on childhood literacy and reading readiness, wrap-around social services while a student attends elementary school and then a commitment to “follow and support graduates through high school and college.”

Beyond an elementary education, Good Shepherd provides “extensive mental health, social-emotional and trauma wrap-around social services” with two licensed social workers, a school nurse, an accommodations coordinator and academic interventionists as well as a summer program that continues core class instruction while exposing students to music, the arts and athletics, Moran said.

Providing services necessary to a student’s success has resulted in 100% of Good Shepherd’s 239 elementary graduates completing high school in local Catholic, private and charter high schools in four years, and 85% pursuing a college education, outpacing national statistics. Currently, 148 are thriving in high school, Moran said.

From the beginning, Father Tompson integrated the community in the school’s success. Every student’s tuition is completely funded by others, Moran said. It costs an average of $14,000 a year to educate each student. Approximately 55% of tuition is provided through state tuition programs (Louisiana Scholarship Program, Tuition Donation Credit Program, NSECD PK-4 Program), and the remaining funds are raised by the school, the annual appeal and its supporters. 

Supportive “partners in mission” (individuals, corporations and foundations) and school fundraisers fill in the tuition gap of approximately $1.5 million annually. The school’s annual golf tournament is March 22 at Lakewood Golf Club.

“The goal is to have true partners who insist on accountability and results – all of which GSS has been able to successfully deliver for almost 23 years,” he said.

Among the business leaders who believe in Good Shepherd is Tim Bennett, senior vice president of Hancock Whitney Bank.

“If you invest in education – and you invest in that education at a young age and take them through this model of the Good Shepherd School – these are going to be winners, and they are going to change the city of New Orleans,” Bennett said. “If we can take and make one Good Shepherd into five, just in the city of New Orleans, you can break generational poverty. You can give children a chance. You can invest in the future leaders of New Orleans and the United States.” 

Brian Grenrood, chief of staff of Jefferson Parish Council Division B who is vice president the Good Shepherd board, believes this model is how New Orleans can be saved.

“This is one of those pillars that can be the groundwork for saving this city and allowing this city to have a future,” Grenrood said. “I want to see New Orleans saved, and Good Shepherd, to me, is one of the ways to save it for future generations.” 

“I think the best thing you can do is invest in the future, and I can’t see a better opportunity than the Good Shepherd School – it is investing in the future.” added Michael Harkins, executive vice president of Universal ComOne.

 For more information on the Good Shepherd School, go to www.goodshepherdschool.org.

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