Don’t Close Schools, Fix Schools!
For many years parents and special education advocates have alerted the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) of special education violations in the charter system in New Orleans. Years before the creation of the Recovery School District (RSD), I did the same with the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB). In my experience as an advocate, the problems we saw with OPSB schools and special education, pale in comparison to what we see now with this new landscape of public education in New Orleans. Worse yet, the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) and the LDOE believes that an adequate solution to thespecial education violations at Lagniappe Academies, is to close the school. These same entities did not exact that punishment on other schools in New Orleans that also violated special education laws. The Southern Poverty Law Center detailed numerous violations over a period of several years in multiple schools, in their federal complaint and subsequent federal lawsuit. Yet, not one school in New Orleans over the last 4 years was closed due to special education violations. Nor is closing schools an element in the Consent Decree to correct those violations. When I think back to my own children’s schools, even on my maddest day at McMain High School, when the principal refused to provide an accommodation that my son needed, I never saw closing the school as the solution to that violation. It is illogical to me to close a school to fix a special education violation. I do not support closing schools, as a form of accountability, not even the closure of charter schools. There are better solutions that punish the violators, and do not destabilize the education of children. I support corrective action plans to correct the problems so that children can get special education services they need. I support revoking charter contracts and returning schools to the elected school board as an option that shows that the department of education is tough on special education violations. It should be the decision of the elected school board whether or not to seek a new charter operator or run the school as a direct operated school. The department of education has had it’s chance at operating public education as a business, and when charter schools fail to uphold the law, it’s time for their participation in the experiment to end in a responsible way that protects children. When the state department of education failed to provide adequate monitoring and oversight of Lagniappe Academy and other charter schools in New Orleans for years, it set the stage for the alleged egregious violations at Lagniappe Academies. The (LDOE) Louisiana Department of Education does not have the staff or the funding to look deeply into every charter school to uncover special education violations that are not exposed by parent complaints or whistleblowers, but it should if it wants to continue to recommend charter schools as a solution to our troubled public education system. Clearly such a wide open, market based system of independent, privately managed charter schools with expanded autonomy, deserves a robust system of monitoring and oversight. The Louisiana Legislature, The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the Louisiana Department of Education share equally in the blame with the Lagniappe Academies Charter Board and administration for the violations discovered after being tipped off by 2 former Lagniappe Academies employees. In a system built on the idea of choice, there is a responsibility to protect the choice Don’t Close Schools, Fix Schools! «Education Talk New Orleans Education Talk New Orleans:
Why is an activist who has fought charter schools fighting to keep a charter school open?: Jarvis DeBerry
"The last thing I want to do is be seen as fighting for a charter school," Karran Harper Royal said Monday morning. "Trust me."
There may be no more consistent voice against the charter school movement in New Orleans than Harper Royal. And there probably isn't anybody who has spoken as loudly or as frequently on behalf of students with special needs.
So I was stunned - absolutely confused and befuddled - when the Louisiana Department of Education announced it would shut down Lagniappe Academies for not educating its special needs students and the city's best known anti-charter, pro-special-education crusader criticized the move.
At a March 11 board meeting of the Lagniappe Academies governing board, Harper Royal told board members that they should consider seeking a temporary restraining order to keep the school open beyond this school year. And she sought me out on Twitter Saturday to say that the state is punishing Lagniappe's children for the sins of Lagniappe's adults.
Still, Lagniappe is a charter school. And not just that, but a charter that, according to the report, often operated with no regard for the education of its students with special needs. Does Harper Royal not believe the state's allegations are true?
Oh, she believes them. She made that clear during our Monday conversation. "I think this stuff absolutely happens," she said, referring to the report's findings that some special needs students weren't being taught at all.
To the naked eye, it might look like I'm not tough on these special-ed violations." -- Karran Harper Royal
"To the naked eye," she said, "it might look like I'm not tough on these special-ed violations," but what she'd prefer is the state not further disrupt and displace families whose educational experience in New Orleans has been characterized by disruption and displacement.
Harper Royal spun her laptop around to show me a spreadsheet she's created. By her count, since 2009, 24 schools in New Orleans have been closed, forcing 4,393 students to seek an education elsewhere. If Lagniappe and Miller-McCoy Academy are closed at the end of this year, the count will be 26 schools and 4,938 students, she said.
"That's totally unacceptable to me," she said, "that we would displace that many children."
One of the arguments for charter schools is the relative ease at which they can be shut down for underperforming. A school that's not cutting it can have its charter revoked and be erased out of existence. But our conversation revealed that Harper Royal doesn't see that as a feature of charter schools but as a bug.
She sees it as inherently problematic to shut down a school and, thus, destabilize a child's education, problematic to tell parents they're free to choose a school and then shut down that school soon after they do.
The Department of Education, which Harper Royal says should have been evaluating if and how charters are teaching students with special needs, has "a responsibility to protect the choice that the parent has made." Last summer, she talked to some of the people standing in criminally long lines to choose a school for their children to attend this year. At the end of that exhausting process, some of those parents chose Lagniappe. Now those parents have been tossed right back into another school selection process.
Instead of putting parents through that again, she argued, the state should have sought a new charter operator for Lagniappe.
Harper Royal believes that the refusal to properly educate students with special needs is endemic in New Orleans, that it was a problem when the Orleans Parish School Board ran all the schools and that it has only become worse since so many schools have
Why is an activist who has fought charter schools fighting to keep a charter school open?: Jarvis DeBerry | NOLA.com http://bit.ly/1FLEBA2
