Mercedes Schneider reviews Kristen Buras’ new book about a Black high school that was closed against the wishes of the community it served. The book is What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans School (2025, Beacon Press). Buras describes a school whose teachers went beyond the call of duty to help their students. If you care about education, if you care about social justice, you should read this book. I did not post the review in full, so please open the link to finish reading.
Mercedes Schneider writes:
I was born in 1967 in Chalmette, Louisiana (St. Bernard Parish), a suburb of New Orleans so close to the city that is is the actual site of the 1815 Battle of New Orleans.
I did not know that my father moved to Chalmette in the mid-1950s as part of the “white flight” from New Orleans.
I did not know why the St. Bernard-Orleans Parish line was so starkly white on the St. Bernard side and black on the Orleans side.
I did not know that the black teachers at my all-white elementary and middle schools were part of an effort for local officials to dodge federal mandates to racially integrate the schools (as in integrating the student body).
(I do remember seeing what I think was one black student in the special education, self-contained classroom of my elementary school– such an unusual, remarkable event that it puzzled my young mind to see him as a student assistant in the cafeteria, and the moment remains clearly in my memory to this day.)
I did not know that when I moved to a more rural section of St. Bernard Parish as I started high school that the African-American residents “down the road” knew full well of the dangers of trying to reside in certain sections of the parish (namely, Chalmette and Arabi).
I did not know that the school-superintendent uncle of one of my favorite teachers tried circa 1961 to create an “annex school” near the Arabi-New Orleans city line in order to enable white parents in the city to avoid racial integration by using school vouchers from New Orleans to enroll their children in an all-white public school just across the parish line.
I did not know that the proliferation of parochial schools in New Orleans was fueled by white flight from the New Orleans public schools.
I did not know that the reason I attended an all-girls public middle- and high school was for local officials to try to sham-integrate the St. Bernard public schools but to keep “those black boys away from our white girls.”
There’s a lot that I did not know and did not begin to learn until I was in my twenties and started asking questions.
But there were a lot of lessons that many white adults in my life tried to instill in me, lessons that indeed needed some serious questioning:
“You know property values will drop if the blacks start moving into a neighborhood.”
“It is better for a white woman to have a physically-abusive white boyfriend or husband than a black one, even if he does treat her well.”
“Interracial marriage is cause for a family disowning a child.”
“The city is a wreck because blacks are lazy and destroy everything.”
As I began reading about New Orleans officials’ cross-generational efforts to obliterate the black middle class in New Orleans (by, for example, by destroying multiple black owned businesses in order to build both the Desire housing project in 1956 and construct Interstate 10 in 1966), I felt like I had been lied to for decades– and my views as a white child and young adult repeatedly manipulated in order to purposely cement in me a sense of white superiority that no amount of personal maturity would ever shake.
Nevertheless, I am happy to say that such twisted, misplaced superiority is indeed and forever shaken in me and shown to be the mammoth lie that it is– the very lie that happens to fuel the white saviors who would impose themselves on black communities– including the center of the community:
The community school.
The community should be the final word on its schools, and when it is, those schools are successful, even in the face of racially-imposed hardship and intentional, multi-generational deprivation of basic resources, including physical space, current textbooks, and even ready supplies of toilet paper.
Such is the story of George Washington Carver High School in New Orleans– a school created as part of a school complex and housing project and build in New Orleans, Louisiana, to intentionally be a segregated school despite its opening post-Brown vs. Board of Education.
In her book, What We Stand to Lose: Black Teachers, the Culture They Created, and the Closure of a New Orleans School (2025, Beacon Press), Dr. Kristen Buras offers to readers a detailed history and daily life of G. W. Carver High School in New Orleans, from its inception to its white-savior closure in 2005, post-Katrina, when the state of Louisiana refused to grant the returning Carver community a charter to operate their own school. Buras details what no pro-charter, education reformer discussed at any length as regards traditionally-black New Orleans public schools: the repeated, intentional, multi-generational, systematic fiscal neglect of both the schools and the black community in New Orleans.
In contrast, Buras not only discusses these issues; she brings them to life through her numerous interviews with Carver faculty and staff, a life that begins even before Carver High School opened its doors in the 1958-59 school year.
Right out of the gate, the community served by Carver High School– families residing in the Desire Housing Project– had to face the reality that the project homes were poorly constructed and were starting to fall apart due to a lack of concrete foundations on swampland, no less.
Indeed, the location of what was known as the “Carver Complex” was originally a Maroon colony for escaped African slaves in a backswamp area that 1973 Carver graduate describes as “really not made for residential living.”
Separate was not equal, but to the Carver community, it was theirs, and in the midst of profound racism, the faculty and staff at Carver High devoted themselves to their students and the students’ families, who also happened to be their neighbors.
What speaks loudly to the teacher commitment to Carver High students, as Buras notes, is their multi-decade commitment. Despite being chronically underfunded and under-maintained across its almost-fifty years pre-Katrina, Carver High School had a very low teacher turnover.
In What We Stand to Lose, readers are introduced to the precise and disciplined teachings of music teacher Yvonne Busch, who was known for offering free music lessons during summer break. Former student Leonard Smith produced a documentary about Busch, who retired in 1983 after a 32-years at Carver. We learn of the 38-year career of social studies teacher, Lenora Condoll, who wanted so much for her students to experience the larger world that she organized fundraisers to take her students on Close-Up trips to Washington, DC, and who, on a practical note, showed students that they could make a dressy wardrobe out of a few basic items, including her “black, cashmere skirt.” We meet Enos Hicks, head coach of track and football and athletic director once Carver High opened. By that time, Hicks had been teaching for twenty years already. When Hicks’ students saw “his bag of medals” for track and field, they believed that they, too, could excel and receive their own medals.
These are real teachers whose legacy is undeniable among Carver alumni. They inspired their students to hold their heads high in self-respect despite the cultural pressures and dangers to be pressed into a Whites Only mold of “forever less-than.”
Carver High School was at most 30 minutes from my own high school. I had no idea such quality against the odds was so nearby.
To continue reading the review, open the link.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
New Orleans has a long tradition of separate and unequal that continues today. It was once the site of one of the South’s largest slave markets. While many communities struggle with racism and segregation, New Orleans’ segregation is perhaps more overt and accepted. After Katrina the city did everything it could to discourage its Black residents. From destroying public education to refusing to reopen Charity Hospital that served the poor of the city from 1736, city officials worked to gentrify the city. It is not accident that the 9th Ward still shows the ravages of Katrina as there has been little investment in the area or its residents. There remains only one small Black owned grocery store in the area.
More than fifty years ago I met a young teacher who taught in one of the white academies in New Orleans. She did not care for the rigid caste system for both Blacks and to some extent women as well. She felt that girls were being molded into ‘Southern Belles’ through the culture of cottilion balls, a sort of coming out party where young girls are trained to be subservient while always polite despite the clear undercurrent of hypocrisy beneath all the good manners.
Integrated public schools often provide young people are all backgrounds and classes the opportunity to develop healthy relationships with others. I was fortunate to have seen first-hand how a well-funded diverse public school with a similarly diverse teaching staff contributes to better mutual respect, healthier relationships and positive social and academic outcomes. One way to help heal a divided nation is to invest the schools that bring us together to provide opportunity to all regardless of background or skin color.
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Indeed, I have photos of historic schools that remained in ruins after Katrina, especially those located downtown in Black neighborhoods.
I have photos of Charity Hospital boarded up.
I have photos of the closure and razing of the Lafitte and St. Bernard housing projects.
Worst of all, I have interviews with community members who were struggling to rebuild their lives with no assistance – and often with opposition.
The history of racial segregation that you reference explains the treatment received by the city’s Black community both before and after the storm. This struggle continues.
There are many white people – a portion of them charter school advocates – who assert that nothing was lost when the city’s teachers were terminated and the schools taken over, closed, and replaced.
WHAT WE STAND TO LOSE was titled this way for a good reason. I wrote the book to dig deep and show the value of one longstanding institution in New Orleans’ Black community. These institutions are dismissed by reformers with one word – “failing’ – and that’s where it stops.
To counter this, we must share the histories as told by those who know best: the students, teachers, and community members who built and sustained these institutions in the face of racism and chronic neglect by white policymakers.
Kristen Buras
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Thank you, Kristen.
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From my experience in a diverse school district, I see the value in having a diverse teaching staff as well. It is positive message for students and the community when they see people that have authority and look like them that work together in a collaborative setting.
The privatization of public education has not solved New Orleans’ issue with race or academics. It has only caused more disruption and opportunities to segregate.
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Yesterday I met a guy who grew up in Jamaica and married a lady from New Orleans. We toured a dam on the Mississippi River together in a tour group, and I loved their childten. His wife taught school. They had been in New Orleans when Katrina hit.
He commented that he was struck by people’s reaction to the emergency. To him, the most notable thing about the disaster was that people had no idea what they should do. Even though there were thousands living in what was potentially harms way, there had been no preparation for the possibility of disaster.
I could not say to him what I thought: it was a feature, not a bug.
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After years of living with HSV-1&2 and trying various medications without success, I found real relief through a natural herbal remedy. Learning more about my condition and exploring alternative options made all the difference. I got support from World Rehabilitate Clinic — worth looking into.
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Y eso. . . que tiene que ver con el precio de te en China??
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Of course, MAGA means obliterating any small measure of improvement wrought by most prominently the civil rights, but also the labor, women’s, environmental, and LGTBQ+ movements. In others words, a full court press to exacerbate already unacceptable inequity.
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