New Orleans Charter Schools Must Include Parents/Alumni as Board Members
If school choice is about empowering parents (also see here and here and here), it seems that charter school boards would necessarily– automatically– definitely– include among their memberships the very parents who have been supposedly empowered.
New Orleans schools have been a showcase (albeit a controversial one) for charterization since the fall of 2005 when Hurricane Katrina devastated the area. By 2022— 17 years post-Katrina– the last local-board-run public school in New Orleans will be completely phased out, making New Orleans a 100-percent charter school district.
What is surprising, however, is how long it has taken lawmakers to require New Orleans’ charter schools to include parents and alumni– locals invested in the community– on the charter school boards.
It’s a shame that charter school boards must be forced to include locals in the actual roles of empowered decision-making. But so it goes.
The 2018-19 school year was the first in which New Orleans charter schools were required to include at least one parent or school alumnus on their boards. In 2019-20, all New Orleans charter schools (except those drawing from the entire state) must be comprised of boards in which both gender and racial makeup of the board must reflect that of the locality of the school– with at least 60 percent of board members being locals.
From legislation in Louisiana passed in 2018, regarding the boards of charter schools located in major cities (i.e., New Orleans):
Beginning October 1, 2018, the membership of the governing or management board of each charter school located in a parish with a population of between three hundred twenty-five thousand and three hundred seventy-five thousand persons, based on the most recent federal decennial census, shall include at least one member who is a parent, legal CONTINUE READING: New Orleans Charter Schools Must Include Parents/Alumni as Board Members | deutsch29