Six yellow school buses pulled in front of Lanier Elementary Charter School in north Baton Rouge on Saturday afternoon, and an outpour of grade-school students and their families exited the doors of the buses, simultaneously chanting, “Lion Pride! Lion Pride! Lion Pride!” An estimated 300 “Lion Pride” chanters had been attending a school with no air conditioning, mold on the walls and technology more readily found in the Stone Age. But the Lanier Elementary students witnessed a bit of a transformation Saturday as NBC wrapped up its weeklong Baton Rouge filming of fall reality show “School Pride.”Baton Rouge was selected as one of seven cities across the country — including Nashville, Detroit and Los Angeles — to be featured on the show, which selects run-down schools to renovate over the course of a week. The series will premiere Sept. 24 on NBC. The Baton Rouge episode is expected to air sometime in October, although no official airdate has been announced. Lanier students were able to see their school’s new features — which include a remodeled cafeteria, brand new technology and a Saints-inspired black and yellow paint job — for the first time as a group on Saturday.Cheryl Hines, executive producer of “Pride” and Emmy-nominated star of HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” said the show aims to reach out to communities whose schools are not thriving.”As a parent and as a human being, you want your community to thrive,” Hines said. “We’re working with communities all over the country to make this happen.” Hines said making students feel like someone cares about them is the reason she became involved with the show. “You go home and feel like your spirit is soaring,” she said. “It’s an amazing feeling.”Hines isn’t the only star to be attracted to the community-enhancing series. Jacob Soboroff, the founding correspondent of AMC News and one of four “School Pride” hosts, said the show visits areas where broken education systems and poor facilities are stopping the schools from reaching their full potentials.”The show is not really about makeovers,” Soboroff said. “It’s about volunteerism and community. Education just happens to be a widget for that.” Soboroff said the show also seeks to inspire other communities to reach out to their schools.”If you have better technology at home with your video game system than at your school, that’s a problem,” he said. “It shouldn’t take a TV show to come in and turn this around.” The five-day renovations saw more than 2,000 volunteers join together to better the school’s facilities, according to Katie Sanseverino, a television publicist for Warner Bros.”With this effort, what we accomplished here would have taken many years,” said Henry Shepard, CEO of Advance Baton Rouge, an organization that oversees the development of several charter schools in the capital city, including Lanier.Shepard said the budget and manpower would not have been attainable without “School Pride.””This is the best facelift it’s gotten,” he said. “If we were doing this by ourselves, we wouldn’t have been able to do nearly this much.”Te’Andrea Flowers, a first-grade teacher at Lanier, said in addition to the facilities’ major repairs, every classroom received some type of renovation.Flowers said the insides of many Lanier classrooms received new SMART Boards, as well as new paint.”This is going to uplift the kids and inspire them to have more motivation to do well in school,” she said. “The best part was seeing the kids’ and teachers’ reactions to having air conditioning in the gym. We’ve had programs in there throughout the year with no air.”The gym and cafeteria received more than air conditioning and fresh paint. New tables align the room, the school’s mascot was hand painted on the center of the gym floor, and a new cafeteria-style serving station was installed to replace the folding tables that made the cafeteria “look like a picnic area,” according to one volunteer. Mayor Kip Holden praised the efforts taken to remodel the school.”This is a setting that will allow the students to learn more,” Holden said. “If you look at the comprehensive scope of the project, it’s something nobody ever envisioned.”Tajiri Seaberry, a fourth-grader at Lanier, said she was most fond of the Saints colors now seen throughout the campus.”It didn’t look like this last year,” Seaberry said. “It’s black and yellow, and we have a garden now.” Lanier Elementary is one of five charter schools associated with Advance Baton Rouge. The school has more than 400 students enrolled for the upcoming school year, according to William Logan Crowe, principal.”We can’t wait for the first day of school now,” said Matthew Robinson, a teacher at Lanier. “If the first day was Monday, we wouldn’t even complain about our summer being over.”
 
 
 
—-Contact Matthew Jacobs at [email protected]