In New Orleans, the Algiers Charter School Association hired a management consultant from New York City to address their problems. Some of their schools have very high scores, and some have very low scores (critics say they are dumping grounds to help the other schools).

The management consultant fired central staff, reassigned principals and embarked on his own plan to shake things up.

This is what happened, as reported in “The Lens”:

The Charter School Reporting Corps
ACSA puts controversial personnel moves on hold after crowd chants: “Raza must go”
 
BY , CHARTER SCHOOL REPORTER. JULY 2ND, 2012

More than 300 mem­bers of the Al­giers com­mu­nity gath­ered at the Mc­Donogh 32 Lit­er­acy Char­ter School to speak out against re­cent fir­ings and the trans­fer of suc­cess­ful prin­ci­pals to fail­ing schools within the char­ter or­ga­ni­za­tion.

A call and re­sponse chant of “Raza must go” and “erase the board” came fol­low­ing the end of an un­of­fi­cial pub­lic com­ment sec­tion and dis­rupted the reg­u­larly sched­uled Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion board meet­ing Thurs­day, June 28.

“Raza must go” is a ref­er­ence to Amir Raza, a con­tro­ver­sial leader who worked as a con­sul­tant to the Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion, and who was re­cently hired as in­terim Chief Aca­d­e­mic Of­fi­cer.

The board made it clear that the pub­lic com­ment ses­sion, held be­fore the meet­ing was called to order, would not be part of the pub­lic record. Ac­cord­ing to board mem­bers, the pe­riod for pub­lic com­ments was un­of­fi­cial be­cause it did not re­late to any ac­tion items on the meet­ing agenda.

At­ten­dees’ shouts over­pow­ered ef­forts to call roll, read min­utes, and re­view fi­nan­cial state­ments. After a few min­utes of try­ing to begin the reg­u­lar meet­ing, board re­treated into ex­ec­u­tive ses­sion to dis­cuss per­son­nel is­sues while com­mu­nity mem­bers chanted: “Shame on you.”

“I need peo­ple on the board to call an ac­tual meet­ing to ad­dress our ac­tual ques­tions. Can you or can you not call a spe­cial meet­ing?” asked com­mu­nity mem­ber Mitchell Thomas. The crowd waited in si­lence for the re­main­der of his al­lot­ted two-minute speak­ing time.

“You knew Mr. Raza was an issue here for us. I think you de­lib­er­ately left this off the agenda,” Edna Karr teacher San­dradee Gray said. Gray’s com­ment ap­peared to echo a gen­eral frus­tra­tion within the crowd.

Val Exni­cios of the Al­giers Neigh­bor­hood Pres­i­dents’ Coun­cil also had con­cerns.

“It is the opin­ion of all six­teen pres­i­dents that Mr. Raza ex­hib­ited the ut­most lack of re­spect, ex­treme ar­ro­gance, and an un­com­pro­mis­ing de­meanor,” Exni­cios said. “We could not, under any cir­cum­stances, work with Mr. Raza for the ben­e­fit of the ACSA [Al­giers Char­ter School As­so­ci­a­tion].”

Teach­ers and com­mu­nity mem­bers also spoke out against the rash of re­cent fir­ings re­lated to Raza’s ef­fort to re­form the schools.

“You say there’s a short­age of math and sci­ence teach­ers. There was no short­age until you fired all our cur­rent teach­ers. Tell me, are you fill­ing these po­si­tions with cer­ti­fied teach­ers or Teach for Amer­ica? I do not want my stu­dents to be guinea pigs for TFA [Teach for Amer­ica],” Gray said.

Many spoke on be­half of O. Perry Walker Prin­ci­pal Mary Lau­rie, whose trans­fer to Al­giers Tech­nol­ogy Acad­emy drew ire from the crowd.

Mar­tin Berhman Char­ter Acad­emy Prin­ci­pal Rene Lewis-Carter faced trans­fer to fail­ing Mc­Donogh 32.

After an hour-long ex­ec­u­tive ses­sion, the board re­con­vened and re­versed its staffing de­ci­sions.

An an­nounce­ment pro­vided by the board said, “At the ACSA board meet­ing last night, the board de­cided to fur­ther con­sider par­ent con­cerns and will meet with man­age­ment and lead­er­ship to dis­cuss the re­ported per­son­nel changes that were sup­posed to take ef­fect June 29. To that end, NO prin­ci­pal and cen­tral of­fice per­son­nel changes will take ef­fect today. The board will pre­sent its de­ci­sions at a spe­cial meet­ing Tues­day, July 3.”

Willie Zan­ders, a lawyer for the par­ents’ group op­pos­ing Raza’s re­forms, an­nounced an ad­di­tional meet­ing July 5 at 5:30 p.m. in the Casimier Love Out­reach Chris­t­ian Cen­ter on Opelousas St. in Al­giers.