On Friday, Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) Superintendent Henderson Lewis announced that he will turn New Orleans’ five remaining traditional public schools into charters by the start of the 2017-18 school year. Lewis will present his transition plan to the school board on Tuesday, although it will be little more than a formality. Under state […] More
Just when New Orleans is unifying behind a plan for a new era in school governance, the activist group Justice & Beyond is trying to drag the education system back to its dark ages. It was recently uncovered that the faux civil rights organization is backing three candidates in the upcoming Orleans Parish School Board […] More
For more than ten years, critics of the Recovery School District (RSD) have attempted to portray the state takeover of schools from the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) as an assault on democracy. “RSD does what it chooses and does not have to answer to the public,” Rev. Dwight Webster complained to the Times-Picayune in […] More
On Tuesday, teachers at Morris Jeff Community School approved a contract between the board and the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO). Union members and representatives of the school’s board of directors had been negotiating the contract for over a year. On Monday, board members unanimously backed the agreement. What did teachers at Morris Jeff […] More
Former Louisiana State Superintendent of Education Paul Pastorek has filed a petition in federal court to intervene in the lawsuit brought by Lusher and Lake Forest charter schools against the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) over looming changes to the district’s school funding formula. Pastorek, who is a lawyer by trade, filed the intervention on […] More
It’s official. This morning, Lusher’s board of directors unanimously voted to file a lawsuit to block the implementation of a new school funding formula if the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) proceeds with a vote on the matter next week. Robert Morris of the Uptown Messenger live-blogged Lusher’s emergency board meeting – you can read his […] More
Julie Lause is the co-founder of Crescent City Schools and the principal at Harriet Tubman Charter School, a Recovery School District charter school in Algiers. I first got to know Julie ten years ago, when we worked together setting up a charter school in Houston to serve New Orleans students displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Not […] More
It appears that officials at Lusher Charter School are doubling down on their promise to fight a proposed change in the way public schools are funded in New Orleans. Up to now, the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and Recovery School District (RSD) have used different formulas to fund their respective schools. The new proposal […] More
On Tuesday, Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard held a press conference to announce a series of new test security measures in the wake of ongoing investigations into allegations of cheating at Landry-Walker High School and ReNEW Sci Tech Academy. Beginning this spring, outside monitors will oversee the administration of the state’s annual tests at […] More
I hopped on the phone yesterday with my friend Chris Stewart (a.k.a., Citizen Stewart) to record another episode of his podcast, Rock The Schools, focused on two recent scandals involving charter schools in New Orleans and New York. In the first half of our conversation, we discuss recent disturbing revelations at two charter schools in […] More
On Wednesday, Education Week published a commentary criticizing plans to create state takeover districts in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The piece – “A Failing Grade for K-12 State Takeovers” – was written by Kent McGuire and Katherine Dunn of the Southern Education Foundation and Kate Shaw and Adam Schott from Research For Action in Philadelphia. The […] More
A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post that called out Lusher Charter School officials for making misleading, alarmist claims about an upcoming change to their school funding formula. Now, unfortunately, it appears that Lusher officials have decided to take their misinformation campaign a step further. On Monday, Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger and Board […] More
Peter Cook