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Amanda McElfresh
amcelfresh@theadvertiser.com

Lafayette's cutting-edge technology and its use in one local high school are helping the city gain national recognition.

Last week, the Academy of Information Technology at Carencro High School, along with Louisiana Public Broadcasting, received a My Source Education Innovation Award from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The award recognizes a public broadcasting station's use of digital technology to serve the educational needs of its community.

Kit Becnel, director of the academy, said during Thursday's joint Lafayette Parish School Board and City-Parish Council meeting that more of those kinds of partnerships are already in the works. If everything goes as planned, this summer, 10 local students and 10 students from the San Francisco area will use high-speed connections to work on three different projects.

Becnel said the projects will be a combined effort between the school, Acadiana Open Channel, Louisiana Public Broadcasting and other entities.

"I'm real proud of this. We're the only academy in a position in the United States to do this kind of project," said Lafayette Parish School Superintendent Burnell Lemoine. "I think this is a major, major recognition because we're the only school in the United States that has that capability at this point."

Lafayette City-Parish Councilman Don Bertrand said that when he, City-Parish President Joey Durel and Lafayette Utilities System Director Terry Huval recently visited Washington, D.C. to talk about broadband technology, many of those invited to the event at Google's headquarters already knew about the academy and Becnel's work.

"The pioneering spirit exists in Lafayette with our LUS Fiber and the work and energy of people like Ms. Becnel," Bertrand said at the meeting. "You're going to hear her name again and you're going to hear it a lot. The entire United States is envious of what we've done. It's no small feat."

The invitation-only event in D.C. was a workshop on broadband and the public interest, and was co-presented by the Ford Foundation and the Paley Center for Media, Huval said. Among the attendees were officials from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the president of the American Public Media Group, the executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition and the chief information officer for San Francisco, among others.

"Their purpose was to talk about how digital public media networks should advance in broadband and enrich connected communities," Huval said. "We talked about various things, mainly public media, like public radio and public television, and how those can be used to provide more information to the masses."

Lafayette officials discussed LUS Fiber, including how it is used in all Lafayette Parish public schools and is expected to be throughout the whole city by this summer. As the infrastructure portion of it nears completion, Huval said the focus will turn toward how fiber can be applied in both schools and the community.

"You could have the ability for a French immersion school to work on a project with students in Paris, France, and have this real-life collaboration," Huval said. "The technology now allows you to have the exchange of ideas and understanding that you could only get in-person before. This is only the beginning. To have this little oasis of Lafayette, La. have the ability to do these kinds of things is really exciting for a lot of people."

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