BATON ROUGE — The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education said it will turn control of two Baker schools that received four consecutive "F" ratings over to a charter company after the local school board voted to close both schools in February.

BESE's School Innovation and Turnaround Committee voted 9-1 on Tuesday to have Baker Heights Elementary and Baker Middle schools taken over by GEO Academies. The sole dissenting vote was Preston Castille, whose District 8 includes Baker.

If the motion is approved at Wednesday's meeting, GEO will take over the schools on May 27. 

The charter company already operates a school in Baker — GEO Prep Baker — and has served around 120 kindergarteners to third-graders since it opened in 2022. The failing Baker schools have about 1,000 students between the two campuses.

When the charter company takes over the two schools, only students in the already child-scarce city limits of Baker will be allowed to be enrolled.

GEO, an Indiana-based company, also has three Baton Rouge schools, each with "B" ratings.

The plan to have a charter company take the schools over was one of two options BESE presented for the Baker campuses.

The schools were first transferred to the Recovery School District, which was created in 2003 to "serve students who've been locked in chronically failing schools."

According to BESE, Baker Middle and Baker Heights were labeled as academically unacceptable for the past nine years.