Class dismissed: How and when New Orleans schools close
For more than a decade, most public schools in New Orleans were overseen by state bureaucrats, 80 miles away in Baton Rouge. That changed last summer, when a state law passed in 2016 took the majority of the city’s schools back from the state-run Recovery School District to the locally elected school board — and its superintendent, Henderson Lewis, Jr. — for the first time since Hurricane Katrina.
It is a different district than the one the Orleans Parish School Board ran before the storm. Nearly every school in the city is now a publicly funded, privately run charter school. This summer, New Orleans is slated to become the first major city in the country without any traditional, district-run charter schools. And Lewis has more power than superintendents from earlier eras. Under the 2016 law, he can now decide without Orleans Parish School Board approval, to close schools considered troubled or failing, barring a supermajority veto vote from the seven-member board. In November, he decided that five New Orleans schools would close this spring.
As of the state’s fall enrollment count, 1,127 students were enrolled in those five schools.
Two district-run schools — Harney elementary and Cypress Academy — were recently taken over from their charter boards due to financial and governance problems. They are slated to close this spring.
Another, the historic McDonogh 35 Senior High School — which opened in 1917 as Louisiana’s first public high school for black students — will continue to operate. But it will be “phased out” after being passed from district to contractor control this summer. The contractor is also opening a charter school there this fall.
The three remaining schools set for closure are all charters. They were returned from the Recovery School District last summer and are considered academically failing. Three have been rated F by the state for three years in a row or more, based largely on student performance in state standardized tests. Lewis decided not to renew their charter contracts, effectively closing them.
“It’s hard to explain to your child why they have the “F” rating,” Alex Lafargue said. His nine-year-old son, Alongkoin Lafargue, CONTINUE READING: Class dismissed: How and when New Orleans schools close | The Lens
