Outside Cash Floods New Orleans Board Race
“We need volunteers, we need your donations and we need you to tell everyone you know in District 3 to vote for Karran Harper Royal,” she said to rounds of applause during her speech. Harper Royal’s campaign web site can be found at www.karran4kids.com.
In New Orleans, where 80 percent of students attend charter schools that are not overseen by an elected board, the race for a local school board seat has become the latest battleground over how to govern public schools in a city whose education landscape has been radically transformed in the seven years since Hurricane Katrina struck.
The campaign for District 3 of the Orleans Parish school board—a panel that directly operates just six traditional public schools and oversees 12 charter schools—features local lawyer Brett Bonin , a one-term incumbent who is running for re-election against two challengers, Sarah Newell Usdin , one of the city's most visible charter school supporters, and Karran Harper Royal , a public school parent and long time advocate for students in special education.
Though five other school board seats are also up for grabs on Nov. 6, the contest in