Venturing out to Luling, on the west bank of the Mississippi River and opposite from Destrehan, many are surprised to find a multi-story, $30 million building with a mosaic of windows stretching from ground to roof. The building, a half-hour from New Orleans, is decorated with four large letters displayed vertically: A, R, T and S.

This is St. Charles Parish’s Dr. Rodney R. Lafon Performing Arts Center, a one-of-a-kind facility that immerses the parish school district’s nearly 10,000 students in the arts.

On school days, the building is full of children, bused in from across the district who are engaging in classrooms with state-of-the-art technology: a TV broadcasting class is taught by a former WDSU producer in a news studio replica; a sculpture and ceramics lesson makes use of two ful

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