The School Nobody Wanted - Except the Community
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Photo Credit: Infrogmation via Wikimedia Commons
January 20, 2014 |
The recently announced closure of Sarah T. Reed Senior High School in New Orleans will usher in the first school district in the country with no publicly run schools – and some community advocates see Reed’s demise as a sign that the local community’s voices don’t count.
“People in our community in New Orleans feel like the voices of parents, students, and teachers have been left out. It’s a perception, especially during this education reform process after Hurricane Katrina. That is how folks have been feeling for years,” says Chris Sang, the communications director of the Vietnamese American Young Leadership Association (VAYLA), a community-based organization that has fought to save the school.
Reed is located in the eastern part of the Big Easy. Its students are drawn from the surrounding neighborhoods, which are predominantly composed of African American, Latino, and Vietnamese families.
The school’s closure was announced by the Recovery School District (RSD), an agency established by the state in 2003 to address the problem of failing schools. The state legislature strengthened RSD’s authority to expedite school closures in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when many New Orleans schools were physically devastated and student and teacher