News

The Town of Jena has been named by CreditDonkey as the second safest town in Louisiana, coming in just behind Brusley. The rating is based on crimes committed in each town/city in the state. Despite facing hurricanes, oil spills, flooding, and other obstacles, Louisiana has shown itself to be a dynamic and enduring state. While cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge are the most recognizable, it’s the smaller, less well-known spots that stand out as the Pelican State’s safest.      

Early enrollment figures for the public and private school students in LaSalle Parish showed a slight decrease from the past school year, down from 2,922 last year to 2,845 this year – a decrease of 77 students. When you add in the students who are home schooled (84), the total number of students in the parish is down by 116 students – going from 3,045 last year to 2,929 this year.    

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There is a new addiction recovery program in LaSalle Parish – one that is endorsed by most evangelical groups and judging by its record over the past 25 years – it works. While many have heard of Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and their 12-step programs, many do not know that there is actually a Christian alternative to the treatment of addictions such as alcohol and drugs. It’s called, Celebrate Recovery (CR).  

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Last week, this newspaper printed the open house dates for all the schools in the parish. The only problem, the correct list did not make it into the paper. We had carefully obtained the correct dates and had the story stored on our server. But in pulling the pages together, somehow the open house story from last year was inserted into the space.   

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During the past two weeks, three more LaSalle Parish churches have been burglarized, increasing the number of churches in LaSalle to seven since July 17 when the first church burglary was reported. The latest, Nolley Memorial Methodist Church in Jena, was burglarized Tuesday night, August  9, where the burglar only took a small amount of coins from inside the church.      

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The LaSalle Parish Police Jury went on record during their regular August meeting held Monday night of last week in support of the 2002 Master Plan Study of the El Camino East-West Corridor plan. Jena attorney Walter E. Dorroh, Jr., a member of the El Camino East-West Corridor Board of Directors for more than 30 years, spoke to jurors and presented a resolution in support of the plan, which was unanimously adopted by  the Jury.        

Karen Lounsbury with Teaching Strategies, LLC speaks to LaSalle Parish preschool teachers, paraprofessionals and teaching assistants as well as Head Start’s three and four-year-old teachers and assistants about The Creative Curriculum for Preschool during the LP School System’s annual Teacher In-service last week at Jena High for parish educators and administration.       

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LaSalle Parish has reached gold status and earned national certification as an ACT Certified Work Ready Community (WRC) and it’s all in the name of providing better job opportunities for the local workforce and encouraging economic growth in the parish and beyond. The certification, granted by ACT, Inc., empowers the parish with data, process and tools that drive economic growth and help employers find the right job candidates through the ACT WorkKeys assessment – a test to measure “hard skills” such as math, reading and writing and “soft skills” such as values, interests and integrity that business leaders say are necessary in a high-performance workforce.     

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