Saints plan on reaching edge rusher Wilson’s potential 1C
N O L A.C O M
|
M o n d ay, au g u s t 10, 2026
$2.00X
Declining enrollment forces tough choices
Krotz Springs Elementary the latest to be shuttered, despite fight from community to save it
Jury selection to begin in killing of FBI witness Prosecutors allege longtime Kenner horseman the mastermind behind staged wrecks
BY JAMES FINN Staff writer
STAFF PHOTOS By BRAD BOWIE
Children have attended Krotz Springs Elementary for over a century. Since 2020, nearly 100 Louisiana public schools have shut down, largely due to declining enrollment. But in the small town of Krotz Springs, residents tried to save their school. BY PATRICK WALL
public schools lost 60,000 students over the past decade as families moved away, had fewer children or opted for Joseph Ashcraft was charter schools and homecrouched behind home plate catching fastballs when he schooling. heard that his kids’ school As the enrollment decline might close. accelerates, more systems THE CRISIS Two moms were chatting beare seeking to “right-size.” OF DECLINING Since 2020, nearly 100 Louisihind Ashcraft, who coaches the ENROLLMENT Krotz Springs Swamp Sisters, ana public schools have shut IN LA.’S while the pitcher warmed up. down. TRADITIONAL One said she’d heard the St. The same trend is playing PUBLIC Landry Parish School Board out nationally, with school cloSCHOOLS was considering shutting down sures surging 35% over the Krotz Springs Elementary, the past four years, according to Third in an sole public school in this small federal data. occasional town about 40 miles west of Ba“We are seeing an enormous series uptick in the number of cloton Rouge. As the softball slammed sures, both rural and urban,” into his mitt, Ashcraft turned around. said Mara Casey Tieken, an education “Wait, what?” professor at Bates College in Maine Up and down Louisiana, parents are who studies school closures and rural getting similar surprises as once-bus- education. The closures come at a high cost. tling schools shed students. The state’s Staff writer
EMPTY DESKS
Joseph Ashcraft stands with his children, Jackson, 8, and Skylar, 13, at a park in Krotz Springs. They create disruption, causing test scores to drop, behavior issues to rise and friendships to fray, researchers have found. And while losing a school is painful anywhere, the loss can be
ä See SCHOOL, page 4A
Three years ago, Sean Alfortish was on a comeback run that had brought him home to New Orleans’ Fair Grounds. The longtime Kenner horseman had suffered a spectacular fall from grace a decade earlier. As president of the Louisiana Horsemen’s Benevolent and Protective Association, he admitted in federal court in 2013 to bilking the group and rigging an election to remain its leader. Alfortish went to prison. He lost his law license. When he got out, state racing regulators rebuffed his pleas to be allowed to own horses again. So Alfortish came back as a Alfortish trainer — first in Texas, then New Mexico, where records show he trained a horse named Mr. Big Rig, and eventually back where he started in New Orleans. “I’m still too arrogant to listen,” Alfortish said in an interview at the Fair Grounds in 2022. “But I’ve grown to understand (the horses) a lot better.” His comeback was aided by his fiancé, a recent law school graduate and former Hollywood stuntwoman named Vanessa Motta. She owned racehorses with names like Dixie Street and Julia’s Warrior — the latter a nod to Motta’s daughter. Alfortish trained them. He could be found tending horses on the Fair Grounds backstretch or, on race days, pacing the grandstand. One spring afternoon in 2023, he punched the air and planted a kiss on Motta’s lips as Julia’s Warrior stormed the finish line a winner. It wasn’t the only game the couple was running, federal prosecutors allege. Within months of that 2023 race, both would be named atop a federal indictment as architects of an eye-popping scheme to pack cars with passengers, drive them onto highways and ram them into merging 18-wheelers. Prosecutors allege Alfortish directed the operation for years, starting around when his federal probation ended in 2016.
ä See JURY, page 5A
Vermilion Parish ponders impact of SpaceX spaceport Residents look to Texas, Florida for clues to what future might hold
BY ALEX LUBBEN and STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writers
As Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration finalizes a deal with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to build a spaceport in coastal Vermilion Parish, residents of the remote area are trying to make sense of what the unprecedented project might mean for their community. Recent comments from Musk
WEATHER HIGH 91 LOW 78 PAGE 6B
and other SpaceX officials offer a sense of the company’s plans to expand its launch capabilities, and some close watchers of the aerospace industry say the Vermilion site likely aligns with those goals. Additionally, there are two other areas that could serve as a guide for what the future holds: Boca Chica, Texas, where SpaceX has built its Starbase headquarters; and Florida’s “Space Coast,” the region around Cape Canaveral along the Atlantic Ocean that has been the site of NASA’s space launches since the Apollo program. In Starbase, Texas, formerly Boca Chica Village, SpaceX incorporated its own municipality with
about 5,000 residents. It has its own mayor. In less than a decade, the company has built rockets and launchpads there, as well as a company-run elementary school. And it is permitted to launch 25 rockets a year. Local elected officials say it has been a boon to the regional tax base. But the frequency of rocket launches has increased with Musk’s growing quest to put more rockets carrying his Starlink satellites into orbit. Environmental groups have called attention to the impacts that those launches have had on nearby wildlife refuges. In Florida, residents in Titusville and Cape Canaveral have lived
ASSOCIATED PRESS PHOTO By ERIC GAy
The sun rises behind SpaceX’s mega rocket Starship as it is prepared for ä See SPACEX, page 5A a test flight from Starbase, Texas, on July 24.
Classified .....................7D Deaths .........................3B Nation-World................2A Comics-Puzzles .....3D-6D Living............................1D Opinion ........................4B Commentary ................5B Metro ...........................1B Sports ..........................1C
13TH yEAR, NO. 363