Three-campus deal will keep Cohen in place, give Booker T. Washington to KIPP
The Recovery School District has awarded the yet-to-be-built $51 million Booker T. Washington High School to KIPP New Orleans Schools in an unexpected re-assignment of the building this week.
KIPP was known to be in the market for a site to start another high school, but the new facility had already been assigned to Cohen College Prep charter school.
In an unusual triple-swap arrangement letter sent Tuesday, RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard said:
- KIPP gets the Washington site,
- KIPP will find its own financing to build a new school elsewhere, combining an elementary and middle school, and
- Money once intended to fix those two KIPP schools will go to Cohen.
New Orleans College Prep CEO Ben Kleban is pleased with the outcome and said the changes were the result of an agreement between the district and two charter networks.
“We’re excited about it,” Kleban said. “I think this is going to be the best long-term solution for everyone involved.”
“The RSD has committed to build a new building at Cohen,” he said. “We know the funds that were originally estimated for (KIPP) Believe were about $21 million.”
It will take more than that to build a new Cohen, Kleban said, but the reconciliation process the district will go through with FEMA funding should help find up some additional funding.
Neither the leaders of KIPP New Orleans nor the Recovery School District returned calls for comment.
A resolution passed by KIPP’s board last week indicated the charter management organization was willing to take on the debt necessary to build a new school.
That resolution made reference to land within the “Bayou District.” Dobard’s letter confirms that KIPP is expected to build in the neighborhood of the former St. Bernard public housing complex, now known as Columbia Parc at the Bayou District.
The Recovery School District still controls a majority of schools in New Orleans, 10 years after taking over more than 100 public Three-campus deal will keep Cohen in place, give Booker T. Washington to KIPP | The Lens:
