Several student groups convened an open forum for candidates running for the local school board.
This gave students an opportunity to question candidates about where they stand on issues that affect students.
Only one candidate did not appear: Sarah Usdin, who confirmed that she would show but did not. Usdin is the ex-TFA executive director of New Schools for New Orleans. She has received more than $110,000 from generous out-of-state donors like Joel Klein, who sells technology for Rupert Murdoch, and assorted Wall Street hedge fund managers who are devoted to charters.
Key points that emerged from the forum:
-Unanimous opposition expressed by candidates regarding the RSD’s method for closing and chartering schools
-All candidates said they believe the fast-track teacher certification programs are insufficient.
-Unanimous opposition from candidates to New Orleans becoming the first all-charter city.
-Unanimous support for comprehensive sex education
-Unanimous support to extracurricular busses so students can participate in after school programs
This is the students’ account of the meeting they organized:
Press Release
For Release on November 1st, 2012
Contact: Jacob Cohen (jacobcohen@vayla-no.org)
Students Grill Orleans Parish School Board Candidates in
First-Ever Student-led Forum
Candidates express strong support for slate of student issues and opposition to fully chartering New Orleans public schools
At 5:30 pm on October 30th, eleven Orleans Parish School Board candidates put themselves in the hot seat Tuesday evening, sitting before a panel of students. Ten students from schools around the city questioned the candidates on issues ranging from bus transportation to school closings. In “lightning rounds,” the youth asked yes or no questions and had the candidates raise a card indicating their response. Several surprise answers came from this format, including broad condemnation of the proposition that New Orleans should become the first city in the United States in which all schools are chartered.
The forum appears to have been the best attended candidate event in this election cycle, with roughly 150 people packing the main hall at the Ashe’ Cultural Arts Center.
One high school student on the panel described his role as the designated interpreter for family members, revealing a serious lack of services for Limited English Proficient households.
Other issues that students and audience members raised include the need for comprehensive sex education; a higher ratio of guidance counselors to students, and the need for certified teachers and ongoing professional development services.
One sore point that students raised also concerned the way that schools have been closed. Bryan Kelso, a sophomore at Reed High School, told the candidates, “it’s a struggle going to a school that may not be there next year or even next semester,” explaining that his school had been labeled a “failure.” In the lightening round that followed, all of the candidates unanimously said they did not support the RSD or BESE’s method for addressing struggling schools through closure and takeover.
Notwithstanding the support expressed by the candidates on nearly all of the issues they raised, students attending the forum questioned the role the Orleans Parish School Board will play in the future. On a handful of the issues, candidates admitted that the board’s power will be limited until Act 35 is overturned. Students also questioned the power that this future board will have in a city dominated by private charter organizations.
Forum organizers also recognize some of the contradictions between the answers candidates gave at the youth-led event and those given at other, adult forums.
Here is the list of questions for the lightening rounds:
TEACHERS: Do you believe that fast track teacher certification programs are providing schools with enough experienced teachers?
[Every candidate said no.]
TRANSPORTATION I: Are you willing to help the school system provide busses for extracurricular activities?
[Every candidate said yes.]
TRANSPORTATION II: Do you believe that every child should have safe, reliable, free transportation options to and from school?
[Every candidate said yes]
DISCIPLINE: Will you support alternatives to zero tolerance school discipline policies and out-of-school suspensions?
[Every candidate said yes but one, who abstained]
SCHOOL CLOSURES: In general, do you support the Recovery School District and BESE’s process for dealing with schools, including closing schools?
[Every candidate said no.]
COUNSELORS: Do you believe, per the American College Counselor Association’s guidelines, that all Orleans Parish schools should have at least one college or guidance counselor for ever 250 students?
[Every candidate said yes.]
SHAMING STUDENTS: Will you support the posting of individual students’ standardized test scores in school hallways and classrooms?
[Every candidate said no.]
LANGUAGE ACCESS: Will you ensure that families have interpretation and translation services at all direct-run and charter schools?
[every candidate said yes or abstained.]
CHARTERS: Should New Orleans become the first district in the country to have 100% of their schools be charter schools.
[Note: no candidate said yes.]
SEX ED: If in compliance with state and BESE board laws, do you support comprehensive sex education in New Orleans public schools?
[Every candidate voted yes, except for two marked “not present”]
A video highlight reel can be accessed at: http://youtu.be/MUSabzsg5ls
Photographs from the event can be accessed at: http://my.slideroll.com/galleries/members/jacobcohen/gallery/my-gallery/?g=by4jfwgw
Photo reel can be embedded on your site by copying:
A transcription of the event and uncut video can be made available upon request
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Congratulations to these students. They make their parents and teachers very, very proud.
And Ms. Usdin, can you please inform the students why you were NOT able to make it?
Diane- did you ask Ms. Usdin for a response? If she gives a false reason or says she changed her mind, then attack.
Let’s suppose her child, partner, or parent died, then you look like an idiot.
While I applaud the students and appreciate you sharing this information, you know what they say about making assumptions…..
Okay..so she can inform the students, parents, citizens, etc and set the record straight.
She didn’t show up, so they wait to hear from her.
It was a nice wish list. The acid test is whether they develop an action plan.
Fantastic list of questions. Kids get the importance of fully-trained teachers (New Orleans more than anywhere else has been overrun with TFA novices), the inhumane cruelty of “zero tolerance” discipline, the unfair difficulty of transportation in a “choice” school system, the need for more counselors/social workers, how disgusting public data walls are, and the need for appropriate language services and sex education. Can we send those kids to DC to work in-heck RUN-the DOE, please!?!
In New Orleans, Students Lead the Way
But Jacob Cohen writes the press release…
“Jacob Cohen is the assistant director of the Vietnamese American Young Leaders Association (VAYLA) of New Orleans and a co-founder of the Raise Your Hand Campaign, a youth organizing initiative that focuses on education equity within New Orleans public high schools.
“A graduate of Pomona College, he is the inaugural recipient of the Napier Initiative Creative Leadership Award, as well as the Davis Projects for Peace Award and the Donald Strauss Award. His senior thesis Privatization, Antidemocratic Governance and the “New Orleans Miracle,” received Edward Sait prize in American Politics, and examines post-Katrina education reform and youth participatory action research.”
What a wonderful young man.
Adults should be asking these questions too. This is why I love kids!
As a Teach for America alumni still working in greater New Orleans (currently 4 years in), I wanted to respond quickly to KatieO who writes that “kids get the importance of fully-trained teachers (New Orleans more than anywhere else has been overrun with TFA novices).”
Because our school had a growing number of Teach for America teachers, we explained to our high school students exactly what the program was, exactly how much training we had/did not have, and why we CHOSE to move to New Orleans to support our TRADITIONAL, NON-CHARTER public high school. In particular, I made it clear that, even as a TFA corps member, I would NOT teach in a charter school or take a job from another teacher.
I can tell you that I regularly hear from my students that they see a notable difference between their “TFA teachers” and their “Non-TFA teachers.”
They say that their TFA teachers refuse to buy into zero-tolerance discipline policies. They say that their TFA teachers are the only ones who don’t believe every Friday is “Movie Day.” They say that their TFA teachers taught them sex education (while others had refused because of their “moral beliefs.”) They say that their TFA teachers are the only ones willing to arrive to school more than 5 minutes early (even though their union contract says they cannot be required to do so.). They say that their TFA teachers are passionate about the content they teach. They say that their TFA teachers are the only one teaching them about social justice and making sure their voices are heard. They say that their TFA teachers run most of the extracurricular activities and were the first teachers to encourage students to go to administrators and the School Board when they had serious concerns about how their school was run.
Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.
Instead of criticizing the thousands of current and former TFA corps members in New Orleans, you should be focused on utilizing them. Many do not subscribe to all of the TFA system, and I have no doubt there are lots of Jacob Cohens in that crowd.
First person accounts are not exactly empirical evidence, but as long as we are invoking anecdotal evidence, here’s an account of a New Orleans charter school board that doesn’t have the same unqualified rosy assessment of TFA: See: Charter Board discusses removal of two TFA teachers as “unprepared” http://bit.ly/Tqh5Mk
So now we want to take the word of the Charter Boards, even though charters are in bed with the TFA deformers? Talk about cherry-picking.
Also, there are several “TFA-teachers” in my school who are still teaching after 4-5 years because they love our students; most plan to stay in teaching for long haul.
While I completely acknowledge this is anecdotal evidence, and I myself have serious misgivings about TFA as an organization, some of the comments have too quickly thrown every TFA alumni working in New Orleans into “the enemy camp.” If we want to make progress and fight off the charters, corporate education, and stop the purchase of school boards, we should utilize these groups. They have the numbers and the enthusiasm.
This shouldn’t be “veteran teachers” or “traditional teachers” vs. “TFA.” It should be ALL teachers and ALL students vs. privatization.
Please set up a meeting with Wendy ASAP….it is the organization that promotes the us vs. them atmosphere. You have much work to do. Good luck IF she will listen.
Interesting, in my school they say that about the veteran teachers. The ones who have dedicated their lives to teaching, not just a few years. The ones that have taught their brothers, sisters, cousins…for some, their parents and aunts and uncles. Every school is different. We value all teachers even the ones with experience who stay in the classroom and don’t use the experience to boost their resume.
Speaking of anecdotes, I was at a conference in DC two summers ago where we were discussing the role of TFA and ways it could improve its training model. In the middle of the discussion, a group of students and former students from New Orleans entered the room. They listened politely for some time and then one young man raised his hand. He spoke of the endless string of TFA novices he had received during his years in the NOLA schools, how they rarely were able to connect with him or his classmates, and how unfair and unequal it was to give the low-income children of New Orleans so many uncertified teachers. He urged the room of educators to stop talking about how to reform TFA, but spoke in a clear, powerful and passionate voice, “Teach for America has got to GO.”
TFA encourages shallow understanding of complex problems. TFAers claim to respect teachers and yet how many use the argument that TFAers care so much more? How insulting to every teacher in America. TFAers will always have an out, a way into fame and riches whenever they choose it, while career educators must suffer through wave after wave of cruel, punitive, soul-crushing “reforms”. TFAers will always have a seat at the able while career teachers will be turned away. TFAers rarely bother to see how their short-term exploited labor damages the profession as a whole, for who can work 16 hours days for a whole career? TFAers will more likely than not spend a great deal of their teaching careers in charters thereby never having to work with the children suffering from the worst effects of poverty. A majority of TFAers will never partner with communities and grassroots organizations for the long, hard, energy-draining fight against corporate forces and the powerful neoliberal agenda. In fact, TFAers are much more likely to be working with and for those very same monied elites.
No, I do trust what kids say. And most kids get the inequality of being given an untrained novice in lieu of a fully- certified professional educator. I had the privilege to see this student perform this spoken word piece live: http://www.wbez.org/story/hallelujah-saviors-are-here-97183 “It’s time we rebuke these self-proclaimed saviors, and put our faith in the true educators. The ones who demand Masters Degrees and Double Majors. Not the ones trying to do the Black community a couple favors.”