Lafayette Resident Sues to Stop Comeaux High School Closure, Alleges Open Meetings Violations
LAFAYETTE, La. (KPEL News) — A Lafayette Parish resident has gone to court to stop the closure of Ovey Comeaux High School, arguing the school board broke state law and ignored its own rules to get the vote done.
Suzanne LaJaunie filed the petition March 20 in 15th Judicial District Court, according to KATC. The filing requests a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, permanent injunction, and writ of mandamus against the Lafayette Parish School System and the Lafayette Parish School Board. A hearing is scheduled for March 30 at 9 a.m. LPSS has declined to comment on pending litigation.
The board voted 5-2 on March 12 to take Comeaux offline at the end of the 2025-26 school year and repurpose the campus as the Ovey Comeaux Workforce Innovation Academy, housing the W.D. & Mary Baker Smith Career Center and E.J. Sam Accelerated School. The vote came with two board members who opposed closure in 2024 absent from the meeting.
What the Petition Alleges
The petition covers three areas: violations of Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law, a potential conflict of interest involving a board member, and the board’s failure to follow its own school closure policy.
Go Further: Lafayette School Board Votes to Close Comeaux High School
On open meetings, LaJaunie alleges board members held side conversations during the March 12 meeting that the public couldn’t hear, whether they were in the room or watching remotely. She argues those conversations were deliberations conducted outside the public hearing, which Louisiana law prohibits. The petition includes screenshots from the meeting’s YouTube stream showing board members in apparent private discussion at multiple points.
The petition also points to an email from Board Member Kate Bailey Labue, who co-proposed the agenda item closing Comeaux. Writing to a constituent on March 12, Labue said the career center discussion had been “ongoing” and that proposals had been “reexamined” before coming to the board floor. LaJaunie argues that language shows substantive deliberations happened outside a properly noticed public meeting.
The petition also takes aim at how Board President Hannah Mason handled public comment late in the meeting. LaJaunie says about 100 people showed up to speak. Mason called a recess, then announced that only those already in line before the break could get back in line when the meeting resumed. LaJaunie argues that shut out residents who had every right to participate.
The Conflict of Interest Question
The sharpest allegation in the petition involves Labue’s ties to the charter school world.
Labue’s husband, Jared Labue, serves as secretary of the Lafayette Charter Foundation Board of Trustees, which oversees charter schools including Lafayette Renaissance Charter Academy and Acadiana Renaissance Charter Academy. The petition includes public records confirming that role.
LaJaunie argues Labue should have disclosed the relationship and stepped aside from the vote, especially since part of the rationale for closing Comeaux was a new charter school being built in Broussard. Comeaux draws a large share of its students from that area. Labue’s own email to a constituent acknowledged that the Broussard charter school had finished its feasibility study and that construction pressure was one reason the board moved when it did.
See Also: The Board Closed Comeaux. Now Its Most Overcrowded School Gets 208 More Kids.
The petition also notes that Labue had previously abstained on charter school votes, citing her husband’s role with the charter foundation. Now, the petition says, she is claiming she had no obligation to sit this one out.
Ethics complaints tied to these concerns have been filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics. Potential Open Meetings Law violations have been referred to both the Attorney General’s Office and the District Attorney’s Office.
Did the Board Follow Its Own Closure Policy?
LaJaunie also argues the board skipped required steps laid out in its own administrative rule on school closures.
That rule says the board must hold at least one public hearing with an opportunity for “full discussion” of the closure proposal. It must be advertised in a local newspaper. And the board must disclose specific information to the public before any vote, including the proposed size and grade configuration of receiving schools, plans for expanding those schools to take in displaced students, and a full cost breakdown with identified funding sources.
The petition says the March 12 meeting fell short on every one of those points. Public comment was statements-only, with no questions allowed. The board never provided capacity or grade configuration data for Acadiana, Lafayette, or Southside High. No expansion plans or cost figures were put in front of the public. And when Mason closed the line, people who had come specifically to speak were told to go home.
The board’s own rule frames these steps as conditions that must be met before a closure vote can happen. LaJaunie says skipping them makes the March 12 vote invalid.
What the Petition Asks the Court to Do
LaJaunie wants the court to immediately halt any steps toward implementing the March 12 vote. Beyond the TRO, she is asking for a preliminary and permanent injunction, a ruling that the vote is null and void, and an order requiring the board to redo the process properly.
The petition says real harm follows if the closure goes forward: students disrupted mid-year, receiving schools pushed past capacity, academic and extracurricular programs lost, underserved communities in District 4 hit hardest, and families dealing with longer and more complicated transportation.
LaJaunie filed the petition herself, without an attorney, signing and notarizing it on her own. That is allowed under Louisiana law.
