The Orleans Parish School Board closed the last public school in New Orleans, in a meeting room filled with protesting parents, students and alumni of McDonough 35. New Orleans is now the first city in the United States without a public school. The board disregarded the protesters.
Why do parents and students fight for schools that have been labeled “failing” by authorities? To find out, read Eve Ewing’s book “Ghosts in the Schoolyard,” about Rahm Emanuel’s brutal closure of 50 public schools in a single day. There too, parents, students, and teachers were disregarded. They were fighting for values that Reformers don’t understand: tradition, community, history, relations between families and schools, a spirit of connectedness that binds past to present. These are values that Reformers are determined to stamp out.
New Orleans is the Crown Jewel of “Reform,” even though 40 percent of its charter schools have been labeled either D or F by the state, and every one of these schools is segregated. On the much treasured measure of test scores, New Orleans ranks below the state average, in a state that is one of the lowest performing in the nation (and whose ranking on NAEP dropped in 2017). For more than a decade, Louisiana has been controlled by Reformers. Its leader currently is John White. The only jurisdiction in the nation that has worse test scores than Louisiana is Puerto Rico. And New Orleans is below the state average. What a triumph for Reform (not)!
Here is the story of another Reform takeover:
The Orleans Parish School Board has chosen InspireNOLA Charter Schools as the future operator of McDonogh 35 Senior High School, positioning New Orleans to be the nation’s first major city with an all-charter school district.
At the board’s November meeting Thursday, Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. recommended and received approval for InspireNOLA’s application to start a new high school starting in August 2019. It was unclear last month if the operator’s application was designed for McDonogh 35, but on Thursday (Dec. 20) the new school was added to the OneApp school selection system as McDonogh 35 College Preparatory High School.
The school board’s charter agreement with InspireNOLA requires the school to keep its name, school colors and mascot, the Roneagle.
McDonogh 35 was founded in 1917 as the first public high school in Louisiana for black children. Although the former magnet school was once considered a “School of Academic Achievement” by the Louisiana Department of Education, its academic ranking has declined since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The “D”-rated school now teaches 451 students in the St. Bernard area, according to state data.
The Orleans Parish School Board is trying to revive struggling schools such as McDonogh 35 by either closing them or turning their operations over to charters. The school district currently manages McDonogh 35 directly, but the board voted Thursday night to award a “short-term operator” contract to InspireNOLA to teach the school’s remaining 10th, 11th and 12th graders starting in August 2019.
A copy of the new contract wasn’t immediately available Thursday, but the district’s plan is to have InspireNOLA phase out the direct-run school until all current students have either graduated or transferred elsewhere within the next two school years.
The short-term contract, district sources say, essentially creates two schools on the McDonogh 35 campus: one for current students and a new school for freshmen who enroll in August. This implies McDonogh 35 will receive two individual school performance scores from the Louisiana Department of Education when its 2019 freshmen are graded in November 2020…
More than 100 parents, students and advocates weighed in on the district’s actions for more than two hours during the public comment period at Thursday’s meeting. Dozens of attendees had to stand.
A representative from New Schools for New Orleans, an InspireNOLA administrator, and an Edna Karr High sophomore were among the handful of residents who struggled to speak in favor of InspireNOLA as opponents shouted over them. Those who were against chartering every school in the city included state Rep. Joseph Bouie, D-New Orleans, McDonogh 35 alumni and dozens of education advocates from Louisiana and out of state…
Gertrude Ivory, president of McDonogh 35’s alumni group, told the school board its “experiment” with charters is “failing” the city’s families. McDonogh 35 alumna Yvette Alexis said the school’s performance scores have dropped because the district “pulled resources” and “didn’t fill vacancies.” Alexis’s claims came after district employees told board members Tuesday the school is projected to have a $145,000 deficit in fiscal year 2019.
Tomme Denney, a McDonogh 35 senior and student ambassador, asked the school board to continue running his school. He has witnessed “a vast amount of growth” among students in this year alone, he said.
“Stop the decline of the school, which has been used to justify giving the school a private operator,” Denney said.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is so appalling that parents, students and teachers are allowed so little input into crucial decisions concerning the schools in New Orleans. The reformers rule the roost and seem to think that they know best and everyone else should shut up already. With the new governor in NJ, there has been a bit of a pause in charter school expansions, thank goodness.
SICK! Jim Crow is well and alive in New Orleans … for sure.
And elsewhere as well …
New Orleans has always wanted segregation. A totally private system where students can be funneled according to where the power players believe these students belong is exactly what was wanted. That public money is being used to fund this racist scheme is a blight on the democratic principles of our nation. The NAACP and other social justice groups should be very worried, and they should be working on an action plan. If they can destroy public education in one city, they will continue on to the next. Isn’t this really the goal of “education cities,” the targeted destruction of public education? Separate and unequal systems paid for by tax dollars!
and lately it appears more and more clear that Big Tech is getting heavily involved in this very action: strategically separate families able to afford their product from families who cannot
My first thought was Thomas Jefferson’s advice about nurturing the Tree of Liberty with the blood of tyrants and patriots. Of course, the autocratic billionaire tyrants will claim they are the patriots until they have corrupted the word so much no one wants to use it, and the tyrants will label the rest of us as a corrupted, liberal, mindless mob funded by George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
Which probably wouldn’t be a bad thing, to get funding and support from OSF.
“Under his leadership (Soros), the Open Society Foundations have supported individuals and organizations across the globe fighting for freedom of expression, accountable government, and societies that promote justice and equality. The foundations have also provided school and university fees for thousands of promising students who would otherwise have been excluded from opportunities because of their identity or where they live.”
If anyone has been smeared more than Bill and Hillary Clinton, it is Soros.
If in New Orleans there are no public schools, then there no longer is “parent choice” the argument for creating charter schools.
The one choice that parents in Nola do NOT have is a neighborhood public school.
Awful…
This is SO sad that parents no longer have the right to speak and be heard. These ‘reformers’ stomp on people and then cheer about what a great job they are doing. The whole thing is sickening.
This is why i didn’t return to New Orleans and continue teaching there after Hurricane Katrina. I knew what the racists endgame was and saw the writing on the wall. I wanted no part of the recovery district and the charter schools. They were and are an abomination imposed upon the children of that city. I chose to remain in Houston and teach in the HoustonISD and AliefISD PUBLIC school districts. These charter school proponents are truly evil people. Imagine trying to destroy the best thing that a nation can have; a public school system.
How ironic, that the last public school should still be called after the Baltimore businessman who was so appalled by New Orleans public education that he left his entire fortune to support public schools. It worked for a while, until the corrupt Orleans Parish school board found a way to break his trust and appropriate the money. One more loss in a city still suffering from physical losses. Now they’re abandoning education. As a graduate from an excellent public, college prep school in NOLA, this is a sad day.
I am a certified teacher in Arkansas and we too are currently experiencing state takeovers and charter expansions in our city but, I can truly say one thing for a fact is too many students are ditching school and prefer to work during school-hours. High absentees play a big factors in schools failure. Too many parents and students are too laxed and do not value education as they once did. Also there is high absenteeism among the teachers. Why because the level of stress in the work environment. Why would any teacher want to work in violent and constantly disruptive environments? Administrators hands are tied in terms of issuing suspensions and trying to appropriately deal with students who honestly live disabilities and those who portray to have serious disabilities.
Parents should be happy to have an option if therevis one, to place their child in a school where serious learning will take place, less disruptions, and a safe environment.
People need to get on board and ride that train. This is an opportunity to work towards opening a charter school that will benefit our children. FYI charter money is available to those who desire to open and operate their own school. Last but not least, remember, if there are no students, then the schools will not make money.