BATON ROUGE — The Realignment 2.0 plan will impact six schools: La Belle Aire, Greenbrier, Park Forest, and Villa Del Rey elementary schools, along with Park Forest Middle and Belaire High School.

The elementary schools will begin going to school at an earlier time, shifting from 8:25 a.m. to 7:45 a.m., which means they will also get dismissed earlier, going from 3:25 p.m. to 2:55 p.m.

Belaire High and Park Forest Middle will start at later times, transitioning from 7:10 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and getting out later, that time will change from 2:25 p.m. to 3:40 p.m.

"We know and recognize that data shows that better start times lead to better outcomes for students, and then options for families mean they will typically choose to live in the community where they live," Superintendent of East Baton Rouge Parish School System, LaMont Cole, said.

The four elementary schools included in the plan will reconfigure grade levels; Greenbrier and La Bell Aire will shift to 3rd through 5th grade campuses. Park Forest and Villa del Rey will become Pre-K through 2nd-grade schools, something not everyone sees as a good idea.

"The school I worked at was Park Forest Elementary, and the students worked together. They went to school from pre-k all the way to 5th grade, and they worked together; they loved working together. Now, what has happened, they will be going from 3rd to 5th to Greenbrier, that's a new environment, new teachers," teacher and tutor, Barbara Bracken said.

As far as implementation, Cole says they will adjust the transportation for the changes in school start times. He says this will not impact the parochial and private schools that the East Baton Rouge School System also provides transportation for.

Cole says they will start setting up classrooms for the grade level reconfiguration shifts as early as June 1.

"We're going to continue to evaluate student outcomes, and student outcomes are always going to drive our decisions. We are going to always put our students first," Cole said.

Implementation of the plan begins next school year.