It’s fair to say that 2020 has been an anxiety-inducing, rollercoaster of a year and it somehow isn’t even over yet. With so many crazy things happening over the past ten months, it’s understandable if you haven’t been playing close attention to the upcoming school board elections. Nevertheless, it’s worth taking the time to learn about the candidates since all seven seats on the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) are up for grabs on Tuesday, November 3rd. We need to elect strong board members who will work together to navigate the district through the multitude of challenges it will face in the coming months and years.

Below, I’ve provided an overview of the candidates in each of the seven races as well as my personal recommendations. But first, if you are unsure of the OPSB district in which you live, you can use the map below to determine your district by entering your address in the search bar.

Also, if you need a refresher on where your polling place is located, you can search for your registration information online using the Voter Portal on the Louisiana Secretary of State website.

With those logistics out of the way, let’s now turn to the seven OPSB races. Please note that the incumbent candidates are marked (I) in the descriptions below. Finally, in case you’re wondering why I don’t indicate the party identifications of the candidates, all but one (Phil Brickman, a GOP candidate in District 3) are Democrats. 

District 1

There are two candidates running to represent District 1, which encompasses most of New Orleans East (except for a small area surrounding Lakefront Airport), as well as the Lower Ninth Ward. There are two candidates running in District 1: John Brown and Patrice Sentino.

John Brown (I)

John Brown has represented District 1 since 2015, when he was appointed by OPSB to replace Ira Thomas, who resigned after being indicted on federal bribery charges. He was subsequently elected to the seat in his own right in 2016. Born and raised in New Orleans, Brown was an educator in the city’s public schools for more than thirty years before retiring in 2003.

Brown has brought his wealth of experience to his role on OPSB, where he has built a reputation for moderation, fairness, and consensus-building. This perhaps explains why Brown’s colleagues selected him to serve as Board President in two out of the past four years. It also explains why he has been endorsed by a broad array of civic and political groups in the city. 

Patrice Sentino

Patrice Sentino is a social worker and the CEO of Hope Children & Family Services, LLC, a private behavioral health clinic in New Orleans East. In interviews and candidate questionnaires, she has emphased her background in social work, saying that she would push to expand the adoption of trauma-informed teaching and social-emotional learning practices in the city’s public schools.

At the same time, Sentino has also signaled some hostility toward our education system. She does not support the continued implementation of Act 91, the law which returned the city’s schools from state to local control (a curious position since repealing the law would vastly diminish OPSB’s power). Sentino has also repeatedly claimed that there has been a “mass push-out” of students with special needs from the city’s public schools, an assertion that is often made by anti-charter activists, even though it simply isn’t backed by facts.

Sentino has raised an impressive sum of money – over $34,000 – so far, although more than half of that amount comes from a $17,500 loan Sentino made to her own campaign. Another $4,500 comes from immediate family members or the businesses they own. She has received the endorsements of the Independent Women’s Organization of New Orleans (IWO), and strangely enough, the Orleans Parish Republican Executive Committee.

Recommendation: John Brown

Brown has dedicated his life to the education of the city’s children and has brought much-needed leadership to the school board over the past five years. For those reasons alone he deserves another term (which he has indicated will be his last). There is nothing to suggest that Sentino, who has little direct experience in K-12 education and has misguided views about the governance of the district, would be a worthwhile replacement. 

District 2

District 2 covers a wedge of the city between Elysian Fields and the Industrial Canal, stretching from St. Claude Avenue to the lake. It also includes a few neighborhoods east of the canal around Lakefront Airport, such as Seabrook, Pine Village, and West Lake. There are five candidates on the ballet in District 2: Ethan Ashley, Asya Howlette, Eric “Doc” Jones, Aldine Lockett, and Chanel Payne.

Ethan Ashley (I) 

Ethan Ashley has represented District 2 on OPSB since 2016 and currently serves as board president. Originally from Los Angeles, Ashley moved to New Orleans after law school to work with the Juvenile Justice Project (now the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights) and now serves as Director of State and Local Advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League.  

Ashley has touted his leadership as board president over the past ten months, pointing to the $5 million emergency fund that OPSB established in March to faciliate remote learning. If reelected, he wants to expand early childhood education, bolster mental health services for students, and improve teacher retention. He will also work with state lawmakers to avoid school funding cuts caused by the pandemic.

I would be remiss if I didn’t call out Ashley for his role in sneakily extending the contract of Superintendent Henderson Lewis earlier this spring. Although Ashley framed the move as a means of providing stability for the district amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, in reality the board took advantage of the disruption caused by pandemic to ram through Lewis’ contract extension. At the very least, OPSB should have conducted a formal performance evaluation and solicited feedback from the public before offering Lewis an extension. 

Asya Howlette

Asya Howlette is a teacher and assistant principal at Success at Thurgood Marshall in Mid-City. Originally from Colorado, Howlette is running because she believes that OPSB needs the perspective of someone with actual experience working in the city’s public schools.

But therein lies the rub. In a recent conversation, Howlette told me that she planned on staying in her role at Success at Thurgood Marshall if elected. Not only would this pose a clear conflict-of-interest (i.e., serving on the board that authorizes her charter school), but it would almost certainly violate state law.

If Howlette assumed office while employed at Success, it would inevitably be challenged in court, most likely resulting in her removal from office and the appointment of a replacement until a new election could be held. In short, the voters of District 2 could find themselves trudging back to the polling booth again to vote for their school board member in the next twelve months.

Eric “Doc” Jones 

Eric “Doc” Jones is an former educator-cum-snake oil salesman with mixed motives and a history of questionable conduct involving schools. 

Last year, Jones was forced to resign from the board of directors of Mary D. Coghill Charter School after a district investigation uncovered that he had been illegally reimbursed by the school for purchases that violated state and federal law. Jones also told Coghill teachers that they could not give students failing grades, even though board members have no direct authority over school employees. 

At the time, a former Coghill board member told The Lens that Jones had been “running amok” at the school for months, while others revealed that Jones was in a romantic relationship with Coghill’s principal, Rayven Calloway, which just made a messy situation even messier. 

It should go without saying that we need OPSB board members with sound ethical judgment who can keep their personal and professional lives separate. Therefore, voters in District 2 should steer clear of Jones. 

Aldine Lockett

Although Aldine Lockett’s name is officially on the ballot, he does not appear to be actively campaigning for the District 2 seat. According to a campaign finance report filed (17 days late) with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, he has neither raised nor spent any money since qualifying to run in July (although he technically should have reported the $330 he spent on qualifying fees). Given that his campaign is in a state of suspended animation, let’s just move on to the next candidate.

Chanel Payne

Chanel Payne is a former public school teacher who currently works as a consultant providing professional development and tutoring services. She is backed by the United Teachers of New Orleans.

Although Payne describes herself as a “highly qualified and successful educator,” a résumé she submitted in March with her application for State Superintendent of Education lists several accomplishments that appear to be misleading at best. Payne said that as lead 3rd grade math teacher at Joseph A. Craig Charter School between July 2012 and September 2014, the percentage of students scoring a “Basic” or above on the 3rd grade iLEAP rose from 21% to 71% in math and from 19% to 61% in English/Language Arts. However, official test results from LDOE show that 3rd grade iLEAP scores actually fell during Payne’s time at Craig. Between 2013 and 2014, the percentage of 3rd graders scoring “Basic” or above in math plummeted from 71% to 35%, while the percentage in ELA went from 61% to 51%.

Her résumé also notes that as an assistant principal at James Singleton Charter School between January 2018 and June 2019, she led the school’s special education team in implementing a state-mandated corrective action plan. However, her work on that corrective action plan seems to have needed its own corrective action plan. As reported by The Lens in March 2019, Singleton was sanctioned three separate times by the district for violating special education laws while Payne was supposedly improving SPED services.

Recommendation: Ethan Ashley

Howlette is a talented educator with a bright future, but her insistance on staying in her current role at Thurgood Marshall would create a clear conflict-of-interest. While I was disappointed by the way Ethan Ashley dealt with Henderson Lewis’ contract, he has otherwise been a solid member of the school board. Hopefully he won’t make the same mistake in the future. 

District 3

District 3 covers an area extending from Mid-City to the lake and includes many of the neighborhoods surrounding City Park, such as Faubourg St. John, Lakeview, Lake Terrace, Gentilly, and Milneburg. In July, Sarah Usdin, who has represented the district for the past eight years, announced she would not seek reelection. There are two candidates vying to replace her: Phil Brickman and Olin Parker.

Phil Brickman

Phil Brickman is a life-long New Orleanian, graduate of Tulane Law School, practicing attorney, and public school parent. He is also the sole Republican running for school board, a fact that makes his candidacy a bit of an enigma. I say this because I assume Brickman knows that running as a Republican automatically puts him at a disadvantage in this overwhelmingly Democratic city. This holds true even in District 3, which includes the GOP-leaning neighborhood of Lakeview, but otherwise trends solidly, if not deeply blue.

In any case, most of Brickman’s positions would garner support from both sides of the aisle. He wants to expand early childhood education, replicate high-quality charter schools, and increase supports for students with special needs. But Brickman also wants to see an expansion of the state’s voucher program and that’s where the feel-good bipartisan vibe ends. It is strange that someone running for school board would want the state to steer more money to private schools, particularly at a time when public education could be facing a pandemic-related funding shortfall. Moreover, numerous studies have shown that the voucher program hasn’t worked.  

Olin Parker

Olin Parker is a former mathematics teacher and the father of three New Orleans public school students. He most recently served as the executive director for charter school accountability at the Louisiana Department of Education, although he resigned from that role in anticipation of running for OPSB.

As a school board member, Parker says he would work to increase the number of high-performing charter schools, expand access to mental health services and Career & Technical Education opportunities, and perhaps most importantly, develop a long-term financial plan for the district that accounts for the economic and fiscal downturn caused by the pandemic. 

Recommendation: Olin Parker

This is an easy choice. Parker is an educator who formerly oversaw charter school accountability for the entire State of Louisiana. It’s hard to think of someone better qualified to serve on a school board overseeing a system of charter schools. 

District 4

District 4 has easily the most tortured and non-sensical boundaries of the city’s seven school board districts. It encompasses all but a small part of Algiers, along with Faubourg Marigny, Bywater, and about one-third of the French Quarter. There are three candidates running in District 4: Leslie Ellison, J.C. Romero, and Winston “Boom” Whitten. 

Leslie Ellison (I)

Leslie Ellison is a church administrator and real estate agent who has represented District 4 for the past eight years. In her first term, she allied herself with then-OPSB president Ira Thomas, whose race-baiting and bullying caused chaos until he was indicted and pled guilty to federal corruption charges in 2015. To her credit, Ellison subsequently emerged as a far more collaborative and responsible board member and has generally been on the right side of important votes.

Unfortunately, Ellison has been on the wrong side of history when it comes to LGBTQ issues. As I noted in a post last year, not only has she made insensitive and homophobic remarks during her time on OPSB, but she has actively opposed efforts to provide protections for members of the LGBTQ community. Ellison has had numerous opportunities to clarify (or better yet, renounce) her past statements. In fact, I’m told that potential supporters urged her to do exactly that in the early stages of her reelection campaign. Instead, Ellison has chosen to avoid the issue. As a result, one can only assume her views haven’t changed.

J.C. Romero 

Born and raised in New Orleans, J.C. Romero has spent his career in education as a teacher, school administrator, and currently as chief-of-staff for Einstein Charter Schools. (In a conversation on Twitter, he told me that he planned to resign from his role at Einstein if elected to avoid a conflict-of-interest.) He has a doctorate in education from the University of Missouri at St. Louis and serves on the board of directors of the Living School, an alternative charter high school in New Orleans East.

Like other candidates, Romero wants to increase the number of high-quality school options and expand mental health and special education services. Unlike other candidates, Romero told the Times-Picayune that he wants the incoming board to conduct a formal performance evaluation of Superintendent Henderson Lewis and develop a succession plan to ensure that any future leadership transition goes as smoothly as possible.

Over the course of his campaign, Romero has sought to draw a clear contrast with incumbent Leslie Ellison by emphasizing his belief that schools should foster the “self confidence and safety of students of all races, ethnicities, sexual orientations, and abilities.” He has been endorsed by Mayor LaToya Cantrell, City Council Members Helena Moreno and Kristen Palmer, The Gambit Weekly, and the Orleans Parish Democratic Executive Committee, among others. 

Winston “Boom” Whitten 

Winston “Boom” Whitten is a former educator running on a slate of candidates backed by the Erase The Board Coalition, the small, anti-charter, anti-reform group whose idea of political persuasion involves online trash-talking, incessant lying, and disrupting school board meetings.

Like Erase The Board, Whitten wants to completely dismantle our school system by getting rid of charters, forcing families to send their children to neighborhood schools, and restoring the power of the teachers union. His campaign website literally says he wants to ensure that schools cannot operate autonomously.

While Erase The Board claims to represent the community, Whitten’s campaign finance reports (both submitted late) tell another story. Of the $7300 his campaign has raised, approximately $2700 came from donors in New Orleans and only $965 came from donors in his district. 

Recommendation: J.C. Romero

There is no place on the school board for someone who has opposed equal rights and protections for members of the LGBTQ community. Not only is J.C. Romero the most qualified candidate in the District 2 race, he will be an advocate for all children, regardless of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or gender identity. 

District 5

District 5 covers a large swath of Uptown, extending from the Warehouse District to Jefferson Avenue and from Broadmoor to the river. The district was previously represented by Ben Kleban, who resigned from the board due to family obligations on June 15th. As a result, OPSB appointed Grisela Jackson to serve out the final six months of Kleban’s term. Jackson, who is running to remain on the board, faces two challengers: Katherine Baudouin and Antoinette Williams.

Grisela Jackson

Grisela Jackson was appointed by OPSB to represent District 5 in June of this year. She is the co-owner and Chief Financial Officer of the Young Engineering Company, a distributor of military-grade marine electrical equipment.

Jackson has been involved in public education in the city over the past fifteen years, first as a board member for Lawrence D. Crocker Elementary and later as a board member of New Orleans College Prep. 

In an interview with the Times-Picayune, Jackson said she would “work to free charters of the burdens that have long plagued their budgets, such as transportation and food service costs.” On the other hand, it’s not exactly clear that schools are begging for someone to take these so-called burdens off their plate. 

Katherine Baudouin

Katherine Baudouin is a parent of two New Orleans public school students who most recently worked as an aide to City Councilman Joe Giarrusso. She previously worked to expand Medicaid eligibility and enrollment at the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals. 

Baudouin is running to provide a voice for parents on the board. If elected, Baudouin will work to ensure that OPSB does a better job communicating with parents and other stakeholders. (Maybe they can start by holding committee meetings when the public can actually attend them?) 

Baudouin also wants to expand mental health services for students, strengthen partnerships between schools and early childhood programs, and encourage more collaboration among charters.

Antoinette Williams

Another member of the Erase The Board slate, Antoinette Williams stands out among the field of candidates for being the only person running who isn’t actually out-of-school yet. Williams is currently a senior at Xavier University and is expected to graduate in December.

Strangely enough, Williams went missing for several days in February before apparently reemerging with the goal of running for public office. Williams says she wants to be a voice for students on the school board, but otherwise her platform lacks much in the way of specifics, as might be expected from someone with little experience in either education or politics.

Nevertheless, her lack of experience doesn’t seem to phase the United Teachers of New Orleans, which included Williams in a list of “highly qualified candidates” endorsed by the union. 

Recommendation: Katherine Baudouin

While I certainly appreciate Grisela Jackson’s service to the board, Katherine Baudouin has a more ambitious and well-thought out platform and will bring the political chops needed for the job. 

District 6

District 6 captures the furthest reaches of Uptown from Jefferson Avenue to the Black Pearl, as well as the neighborhoods of Hollygrove, Fontainebleau, and Gert Town. Earlier this summer, Woody Koppel, who has served as the district’s board member since 2008, announced he would not run for reelection this fall. There are three contenders for the open seat: David Alvarez, Erica Martinez, and Carlos Zervigon.

David Alvarez 

David Alvarez is a non-profit consultant and parent of two current New Orleans Public Schools students. This is Alvarez’s second run for the District 6 seat, having previously lost to Woody Koppel in 2016. 

During the 2016 campaign, I brought attention to Alvarez’s failure to file timely campaign finance reports and close ties to the teachers unions on this blog, which apparently got under-the-skin of some of his supporters. Last year, one of them randomly attacked me on Facebook about the pieces I wrote, asserting that I had no idea where Alvarez stood on the issues. I wrote the following in response:

“For what it’s worth, I did take the time to learn about where David stood on the issues. My impression was that he was well-intentioned, but woefully unprepared for the job. I also got the impression that he had been conscripted by UTNO to stand for the office, since he seemed to parrot many of their talking points and was the beneficiary of hundreds of thousands of dollars of their outside spending. Finally, it seems like my original impression was right, since David certainly hasn’t been weighing in on education policy or a visible presence at OPSB meetings ever since he lost his election two years ago, which is something I would expect from a serious candidate who is committed to improving public education.”

My assessment of Alvarez hasn’t changed. While he claims to be passionate about public education, he’s been completely absent from school debates over the past four years. His prolix and discursive platform sketches out Alvarez’s views on 21st Century capitalism and namechecks an obscure Spanish workers cooperative, but gets basic facts about the school system wrong. He also doesn’t seem to realize that some of his policy ideas would be illegal, such as his proposal that OPSB-authorized charters be required to offer multi-year contracts to employees.

Alvarez has tried to downplay his antipathy towards charter schools, which he openly opposed before deciding to run for OPSB. Back in 2014, Alvarez was one of five self-appointed “community activists” who tried to the block the sale of the long-abandoned Priestley Junior High School building to Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans, a popular French-immersion charter that wanted to expand. Calling themselves “The P-Town Project,” Alvarez and his fellow activists protested the sale at community meetings and attacked Lycée Français in an online screed entitled, “Why French Lycée [sic] is the Worst Option For the Priestley Building.”

Lycée eventually got the building, the P-Town Project was never heard from again, and Alvarez now says he wants to expand the number of seats in high-quality schools rather than block them. Color me skeptical. 

Erica Martinez

Erica Martinez is a program director at College Beyond, an organization that helps low-income New Orleans students navigate the myriad challenges they face in college. She is also a New Orleans public school parent who serves on the district’s parent advisory committee.

Martinez is primarily interested in expanding mental health services for students and encouraging more schools to adopt trauma-informed practices in their classrooms. She also wants schools to build stronger relationships with local non-profit organizations that focus on supporting children and young adults.

While these are certainly positive aims, when it comes to important issues like district oversight and governance, school accountability, and student academic achievement, Martinez’s platform has far less to say. 

Carlos Zervigon

Carlos Zervigon is a former public school teacher, glass artist, and parent of six (!) former New Orleans public school students. Born and raised in the city, Zervigon is a graduate of Eleanor McMain High School, Tulane University, and the University of New Orleans.

Zervigon has been deeply involved in the city’s post-Katrina school reform efforts over the years. He was the founding board chair of Audubon Charter School and has served on the boards of directors of both Ben Franklin High School and the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts (a.k.a., NOCCA).

If elected, Zervigon wants to build a better system for the delivery of special education services. He also seems to be the only candidate to raise the issue of pandemic-related learning loss. In an interview with the Times-Picayune, Zervigon said he would push for a “district-wide learning recovery plan” to ensure that students can make up lost ground.

Although this is his first run for school board, Zervigon has some experience in electoral politics. Earlier this spring, he defeated three opponents, including David Alvarez, in an election for the Democratic State Central Committee.

Recommendation: Carlos Zervigon

Unlike David Alvarez, Zervigon wants to improve our school system, not blow it up. His deep roots in New Orleans and experience as a teacher and charter school board member make him the best candidate for District 6. 

District 7

Last, but certainly not least, is District 7, which extends from Gentilly through the Seventh Ward, Tremé, most of the French Quarter, the Warehouse District, and even bites off a small chunk of Algiers on the far side of the river. There are three candidates running in District 7: Nolan Marshall, Jr., Kayonna Armstrong, and Jamar Wilson.

Nolan Marshall, Jr. (I) 

Nolan Marshall is a retired small business owner who has represented District 7 since 2012. During his time on the board, Marshall has pushed for later school bus pick-up times, a unified school calendar, along with other pragmatic improvements. 

If reelected for another term, Marshall says he will focus on initiatives that address the social and economic needs of students and their families. For example, he believes schools should do more to build students’ financial literacy skills and he wants the district to partner with local organizations to expand job training opportunities.  

If I had one criticism of Marshall’s tenure on OPSB, it’s that he sometimes vacillates when confronted with hard decisions. However, his hesitancy comes from a good place: he simply wants to make the right choice.

Kayonna Armstrong

Kayonna Armstrong is a former paraprofessional and current parent activist with the union-backed astroturf group, Step-Up Louisiana.

Armstrong is running on a platform would essentially tear down our school system. She wants to eliminate all charter schools, jettison OneApp in exchange for neighborhood-zoned schools, and restore the power of the teachers union. Of course, when it comes to issues like academic performance or accountability, Armstrong doesn’t have as much to say. 

As one might expect, Armstrong is supported by both the Erase the Board Coalition, although they haven’t put much money behind her candidacy. As of October 26th, Armstrong’s campaign had raised a little over $6500. 

Jamar Wilson

Jamar Wilson is an educator who works as the Dean of Student Support at KIPP Leadership Primary in the Faubourg Marigny. He originally hails from Riverside, California, but moved to New Orleans in 2015 to work with RENEW Schools before moving to his current position at KIPP. 

Like everyone else, Wilson wants to expand to mental health and special education services for students. He also wants to the district to recruit charter schools that offer more than a traditional college prep focus.

At the same time, some elements of Wilson’s platform are a bit confounding. In an interview with the Times-Picayune, Wilson said he wants the district to directly manage some schools, even though OPSB doesn’t exactly have a strong track record in that regard. The return of direct-run schools would also force the district to re-establish the central office bureaucracy that it only recently restructured, drawing resources and attention away from its primary role overseeing the city’s charter schools.  It’s unclear whether Wilson really thinks this is a good idea or is just trying to distinguish himself from other candidates. 

Recommendation: Nolan Marshall, Jr. 

Nolan Marshall has been a dedicated board member who has been on the right side of votes and is clearly committed to improving education in this city. He deserves another term.

This post Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Our School Board Elections* appeared first on PE + CO.

… Or at least, it’s the most wonderful time of the year for those New Orleans schools that showed progress on their 2018-19 school letter grades and School Performance Scores (SPS), which were released by the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) on Wednesday.

This was the second year that school and district performance was assessed using new formulas that incorporate students’ annual growth on state standardized tests, which the state adopted as part of its plan to comply with the Every Student Succeeds Act, the federal law that replaced No Child Left Behind. As a reminder, here’s a breakdown of how school performance is measured at various grade configurations:

• For elementary grades, 25% of letter grades and SPS scores are based on student growth, with the rest based on an absolute measure of achievement on state standardized tests;
• For middle grades, 25% of letter grades and SPS scores are based on student growth, 70% is based on an absolute measure of student performance on tests, and 5% is based on a metric that measures how many credits their recently graduated students accumulate in their freshman year of high school.
• For high schools, 25% is based on a metric incorporating test performance and student growth, 25% is based on the cohort graduation rate, 25% is based on achievement on the ACT and career-readiness assessments, and the final 25% is based on a metric that takes into account in how many students take college-level classes (such as Advanced Placement) and earn Jump Start credentials.

This year also marked the first time that Louisiana’s alternative schools were graded using a new accountability framework that takes into account the unique circumstances in those settings. Previously, alternative schools and traditional schools were assessed using the same formula, with the result that every alternative school in the state received an “F” year after year.

With that out of the way, let’s take a closer look at school performance in New Orleans…

NOLA School Performance: The Big Picture

Overall, the district’s performance score ticked up 1.6 points (from 66.2 to 67.8) in 2019, while maintaining its “C” letter grade.

Out of 81 public schools operating in New Orleans last year, 57% (45) received a grade of “C” or better, 28% (23) received a “D”, and 15% (12) were deemed failing. It should be noted that six of those “D” and “F”-rated schools (Cypress, Harney, Nelson, Fischer, McDonogh #32, and Clark) were closed last year. Another “D” school, McDonogh #35, was taken over by the high-performing InspireNOLA charter network this summer and relaunched under their management in August.

Ben Franklin High School was once again the highest-performing school in the city with a SPS of 135.5, easily beating its selective admissions rival Lusher, which came in at number two with a score of 123.1. Meanwhile, whatever New Orleans Military & Maritime Academy is doing must be working; it’s not only the highest-performing open-enrollment school in the city, but its SPS score jumped 10 points year-over-year.

Other open-enrollment standouts this past year included Warren Easton, Edna Karr, Lycée Français, Rosenwald Collegiate, and International School of Louisiana. (And yes, I’m intentionally leaving out Hynes and Audubon from this list since the former is somehow allowed to pull a good portion of their students from one of the wealthiest zip codes in city, while the latter gives enrollment preference to children whose families can pay for their pre-kindergarten program. Sorry, not sorry.)

NOLA School Performance: The Most Improved

The addition of a growth measurement to the grading formula is a welcome change since our so many of our city’s students enter school well-behind where they should be. It allows us to identify schools whose students are making significant academic growth over the course of the year, even though that progress might not be reflected in an absolute measure of performance.

This past year, 74% of New Orleans public schools received an “A” or “B” on their progress index, which gauges student growth year-to-year. Students at Dwight D. Eisenhower showed the most growth of any open-enrollment school in the city, followed by Habans, Wilson, Harte, and McDonogh #42.

In terms of SPS, Sophie B. Wright saw the biggest increase of any school in the city – jumping an impressive 17 points – which makes one wonder why they were so concerned about a silly senior prank last year. Landry-Walker, whose performance plunged following a testing scandal, rebounded with their SPS rising 12.4 points and their letter grade jumping from a “F” to a “C”. Eisenhower, which was taken over by InspireNOLA, also saw a significant jump of more than 12 points, while McDonogh #42 rose nearly 10 points.

NOLA School Performance: The Bottom Feeders

On the other end of the spectrum are those schools that saw some of the biggest drops in performance last year and the list includes some surprising names. For example, Lafayette Academy saw its SPS fall 15 points and its grade plummet from a “C” to a “F”. Rooted School, a so-called “micro school” that has gotten lots of attention for its focus on preparing students for careers in the tech industry, fell 13.1 points, although it still earned a “C” grade overall. Booker T. Washington, which is part of the nationally-recognized KIPP charter school network and recently moved into a new school building in Central City, also saw a double-digit drop of 10.2 points.

Congratulations to students, staff, and alumni on the KIPP Booker T. Washington Groundbreaking Ceremony!! #nolaed @KIPPNO pic.twitter.com/ElqJu6WrIo

— NOLA Public Schools (@NOLAPSchools) December 13, 2016

There are also some not-so-surprising names on the list. Lawrence D. Crocker, which is run by the struggling New Orleans College Prep network, earned an “F” grade after its SPS fell nearly 14 points. Of particular concern are the three remaining schools in the ReNEW Schools network, which seems to be (or more accurately should be) on a trajectory toward dissolution. ReNEW Schaumburg in New Orleans East went from a “D” to an “F” this past year, while its other two schools, Dolores T. Aaron and SciTech both earned a “D”. Meanwhile, Joseph A. Craig, which is run by the once-admired-but-now-dishonored Friends of King network, earned an “F” grade and a woefully-bad SPS of 38.8. And finally, Mary D. Coghill, which is overseen by the ironically-named Better Choice Foundation, will likely be closed at the end of the school year after earning an “F” and SPS of 44.

You can explore grades and SPS scores for all New Orleans schools in the table below.

NOLA School Performance: Explore The Data

This post Which New Orleans Schools Made The Grade? appeared first on PE + CO.

“This ship is crashing, it’s sinking,” Wyatt said in a recent interview with the New Orleans Tribune. “And if we don’t do anything about it, our children are the ones who will be paying the price for greed, for corruption, for malfeasance, for privatization.”

Wyatt is one of two candidates trying to unseat Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) District 2 member Kira Orange Jones in next month’s elections. While Jones is seeking another term on BESE to build upon the progress schools have made over the past 15 years, Wyatt is running on a platform that can most charitably be described as retrograde, in the sense that it would take our district back to its dysfunctional pre-Katrina days.

If elected, Wyatt has promised to repeal Act 91, the law which reunified the city’s public schools last year (never mind that only the legislature – not BESE – can rescind the law), restore the power of the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), and turn the city’s charters back into traditional public schools. She also wants to replace State Superintendent John White, the longest-serving state superintendent in the country, whom she nonetheless considers “unqualified.”

Wyatt insists that such drastic (or, more accurately, disastrous) moves are necessary because the education system in our city is so terrible. She dismisses research that has shown that the reforms we’ve undertaken in New Orleans have raised student performance, insinuating that the data has been manipulated by education officials. She asserts that the people who work hard everyday running the city’s schools are simply trying to “benefit their businesses” and has said, “our children are just collateral damage in this business that is charter reform.”

Not surprisingly, Wyatt’s platform and portrayal of New Orleans public schools are music to the teachers unions’ ears. In recent weeks, the Louisiana Association of Educators, Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and United Teachers of New Orleans have all endorsed her. The unions’ proxy organizations have followed suit as well. Step Up Louisiana, a local activist group launched by the Center for Popular Democracy – whose previous efforts to sabotage charter schools in Louisiana were exposed by this blog, as well as the New Orleans Advocate – threw its support behind Wyatt earlier this month. Wyatt has also allied herself with the so-called Erase The Board coalition, a group that wants to get rid of the city’s charters and uses social media to make ugly, slanderous attacks on Kira Orange Jones, OPSB officials, school leaders, and anyone else who happens to disagree with them.

Given Wyatt’s distain for our city’s education system – a system in which, to borrow her words, students become “collateral damage”  – you may be surprised to learn that she sends her own child to a New Orleans public school even though she lives in Jefferson Parish, a fact that was revealed by Kira Orange Jones during a BESE candidate forum at Audubon Charter School last week.

“Again, you are choosing to send your child to a New Orleans school, which takes a seat from a New Orleans child,” Jones told Wyatt during the candidate forum. “If you don’t want to send your child to a New Orleans school where you don’t like the testing, or you don’t like the board, or you don’t like the way schools are moving here, then send your child to a school in Harvey, legally.”

Sources confirm Wyatt sends her child to Alice Harte Elementary, a high-performing, open-enrollment K-8 charter school in Algiers operated by the InspireNOLA network, which is one of the most sought-after school options in the city. As is the case elsewhere, students enrolling in New Orleans public schools (with the exception of BESE-authorized “Type 2” charters like the New Orleans Military And Maritime Academy) must be a resident of Orleans Parish. However, as Wyatt stated in her public comments at an Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) meeting in February 2019, she in fact lives in Harvey. As a result, her child should be enrolled in the Jefferson Parish Schools system.

Moreover, Wyatt previously indicated that she lived in Harvey (at the same address she shared at the OPSB meeting in February) in a 2015 state filing for a non-profit organization she started, which suggests that Wyatt’s deception has been going on for years.

On the one hand, one might have sympathy for Wyatt, or even forgive this transgression, since she’s a parent who is simply trying to provide her child with the best education that she can. But that’s hard to square with the fact that Wyatt decries our charter-based model as “privatization” and is running for BESE on a platform that would take away good schools like Harte from families who actually live in this city. Regardless of whether Wyatt’s actions are criminal, it’s hard to view them as anything other than hypocritical.

When citizens in BESE District 2 head to the polls on October 12th, they will have a choice between a candidate who wants to strengthen and build upon what our school system has accomplished over the past decade, or candidates who seek to drag our schools backward. Let’s hope they choose the former rather than the latter.

Those of us who support the city’s reforms can help ensure that happens by showing up on Election Day.

This post School Choice For Me, But Not For Thee appeared first on PE + CO.

According to the Tampa Bay Times, federal investigators are also exploring Gillum’s ties to two Massachusetts-based anti-education reform organizations – the Schott Foundation for Public Education and its affiliated 501(c)(4), the Opportunity To Learn Action Fund – and have demanded information about Schott CEO and president John H. Jackson and board member Sharon Lettman-Hicks.

Tax filings show that Gillum was a member of the board of directors of the Schott Foundation as recently as June 2017. He concurrently served as president of the Opportunity To Learn Action Fund (OTLAF), which is directly controlled by Schott, although he did not earn a salary in that role.

This isn’t the first time that questions have been raised about Gillum’s conduct. In August 2015, a year into Gillum’s tenure as mayor of Tallahassee, the FBI launched an undercover corruption investigation of the city government. Although Gillum was never directly implicated, three city officials were eventually indicted on racketeering, bribery, extortion, bank fraud, and wire fraud charges.

It subsequently emerged that Gillum had accepted tickets to the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” as well as a free hotel room from an undercover FBI agent who was posing as a real estate developer during a 2016 trip to New York. In April, Gillum paid a $5000 fine to settle charges related to the Hamilton trip brought by the Florida Commission on Ethics.

A closer look at the Schott & Opportunity To Learn

The recent subpoenas mean that Gillum’s settlement with the ethics commission may not mark the end of his legal troubles. They also bring a new level of scrutiny to the inner workings of the Schott Foundation.

The Schott Foundation’s self-declared mission is “to develop and strengthen a broad-based and representative movement to achieve fully resourced, quality PreK-12 public education.” In reality, Schott works in lockstep with the national teachers unions in three key areas. First, it provides grants to anti-reform groups such as the Network for Public Education, Alliance for Quality Education, Annenberg Center for School Reform at Brown University, and UCLA Civil Rights Project.

Furthermore, as I explained in a 2017 op-ed in The Seventy-Four, Schott organizes and underwrites trainings for its nationwide network of grantees, many of which focus on messaging and communications strategy. Finally, Schott engages in policy development and advocacy, and has published dozens of reports opposing charters, accountability, and standardized testing.

Read my piece in The 74:

Cook: Charter Activists Know How to Walk the Walk but Not How to Talk the Talk

The 74 is moderating a panel Wednesday at the 24th annual California Charter Schools Conference in Sacramento, about inaccurate narratives surrounding public charter schools and how the mainstream media covers, and occasionally distorts, the sector. (Livestream will start here at 1:45pm EST.)

But the strange thing about the Schott Foundation is that it’s not a foundation in the traditional sense of the word. Its most recent available tax filings reveal that Schott has less than $9 million in assets, and unlike other philanthropic foundations, it makes very little revenue from investments. In fact, a review of the Schott Foundation’s tax returns between 2013 and 2017 indicates that the vast majority of its revenue comes from outside contributions and grants (97% of total revenue in F.Y. 2017) and it tends to spend only as much as it takes in. All of which suggests that Schott primarily serves as a conduit for other people’s money.

Annual financial reports to the U.S. Department of Labor show that the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) have given Schott and OTLAF a total of $1,330,000 since 2011, although the overwhelming majority of that money ($1,275,000) went to the Opportunity To Learn Action Fund. Moreover, tax records indicate that AFT and NEA’s contributions accounted for more than 99% of OTLAF’s revenues between 2011 and 2017.

Opportunity To Learn tax filings raise questions, shine light

A review of those same tax records raises questions about the organization’s accounting practices. For example, OTLAF’s tax returns state the organization had no revenue during the fiscal year that ended June 30th, 2012.

However, NEA’s 2012 annual report to the U.S. Department of Labor reveals that the union made two $150,000 contributions to the organization in October 2011 and March 2012.

There is a similar discrepancy for OTLAF’s 2016 tax filings, in which the organization reported only $60 in revenue.

Once again, this conflicts with AFT’s 2016 annual report to the Department of Labor, which indicates that the union gave Opportunity To Learn $75,000 in August 2015.

How the Opportunity To Learn Action Fund actually spent the funding it got from AFT and NEA also invites scrutiny. Of the nearly $1,285,000 in revenue the organization received between 2011 and 2017, OTLAF reported that it spent 52% of that money ($671,673) as “Other Expenses” on their tax returns, a category which encompasses what are more commonly known as overhead costs. This appears rather high given that the National Council for Nonprofits says that the normal range for overhead rates is 25-35%.

But perhaps the most interesting revelations in Opportunity To Learn’s tax returns is who received the $535,000 in grants the organization distributed during the same period. In F.Y. 2017, OTLAF gave $45,000 to Massachusetts Jobs With Justice Action Fund and $10,000 to the New England Area Conference of the NAACP. On its tax return, OTLAF stated that these grants were made in support of Save Our Public Schools, a referendum committee that opposed Question 2, a ballot initiative that sought to lift the charter school cap in Massachusetts.

It just so happens that both Jobs With Justice and the New England Conference of the NAACP joined the Save Our Public Schools campaign, which raises the question of whether AFT and NEA used the OTLAF grants to buy the support of those organizations.¹

OTLAF also made grants to organizations involved in the effort to defeat a 2016 constitutional amendment that would have created an “Opportunity School District” in Georgia with the power to takeover perennially failing public schools.

Furthermore, OTLAF gave $100,000 to underwrite the anti-reform documentary, “Backpack Full of Cash,” which was narrated by Matt Damon. The film has been heavily promoted by AFT and NEA, which makes sense, since they essentially paid for it via Opportunity to Learn.

It should be noted that the grand jury subpoenas issued to the Schott Foundation and Opportunity To Learn Action Fund do not necessarily mean that those organizations are officially the subjects of an FBI investigation. Nevertheless, it will be interesting to see what, if anything, emerges from the grand jury probe in the coming weeks and months.

This post Schott Foundation Under Microscope In Federal Investigation of Gillum Campaign appeared first on PE + CO.

On Friday, the Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s newly-established Office of Youth and Families issued a statement on OneApp, the system that families use to enroll their children in New Orleans public schools. The move was puzzling for a number of reasons.

For one thing, Mayor Cantrell has no authority whatsoever over the school system, which is governed by the seven elected members of the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), an independent public body separate from the City of New Orleans.

Given that fact, the Mayor’s decision to officially weigh-in on OPSB’s enrollment process could understandably be viewed as both inappropriate and unhelpful, particularly from the standpoint of OPSB. (Can you imagine how the Mayor would react if, say, the Jefferson Parish Council issued a public appraisal of the Sewerage & Water Board?) Indeed, OPSB leaders spent much of last week trying to dissuade the Mayor’s office from issuing the statement. Sources with knowledge of those discussions say that the Mayor’s team solicited feedback on various drafts of their press release, but refused requests to nix it altogether.

What did the Cantrell Administration have to say that was so profoundly important that it was necessary to press on over the objections of OPSB? Not a whole hell of a lot. The 380-word press release issued on Friday is heavy on platitudes, devoid of real substance, and dripping with condescension.

Consider, for example, this quote attributed to Emily Wolff, the director of the Mayor’s Office of Youth and Families, which serves as the centerpiece of the statement:

“We need to double-down on working to create more high-quality seats for all of our city’s children. I urge the OPSB, policy leaders and educators to work to adapt best practices to more schools and better communicate with families about the diverse array of school choices available to them.”

Create more high-quality school options? Employ best practices? Communicate with families? My god, what revolutionary ideas!

Apparently, the Mayor and her staff believe the city’s education policymakers, school leaders, and teachers have been aimlessly scratching around in the dirt for the past fifteen years. Perhaps she hadn’t heard that the post-Katrina New Orleans school system improved faster than any other school district in the country. Maybe Mayor Cantrell also missed the release of a new study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes at Stanford, which found that New Orleans schools are outperforming the state on academic growth.

In spite of this progress, she would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the local education community who doesn’t recognize that we have a lot of work to do when it comes to improving schools. In just the past few months, OPSB Supt. Henderson Lewis announced that four low-performing schools would be closing at the end of the school year. It’s hard to comprehend how the Mayor could look at that and draw the conclusion that the district is resting on its laurels.

If the Cantrell Administration is really serious about “working to ensure the system works better,” it can start by staying out of the schools district’s affairs. There are plenty of issues within the Mayor’s purview that need to be addressed, such as the recent spike in juvenile violent crime, the dearth of after-school programming for New Orleans youth, or the fact that public schools often have to close due to problems arising from the city’s crumbling infrastructure.

Tackling these challenges would be a vastly more helpful than admonishing – and by extension, insulting – the education professionals who are working to improve our city’s schools every day.

Oh, one more thing…

Do you want to know what’s even more insulting? While Mayor Cantrell is insisting the district “double-down” to expand high-quality schools, she’s surreptitiously trying to seize a bigger chunk of OPSB’s tax revenues.

Under current state law, the City of New Orleans is responsible for collecting property and sales taxes in the parish. The city then gives the Orleans Parish School Board its share of the money minus a 2% fee, which is intended to cover the costs incurred by the city to collect the taxes. However, Mayor Cantrell is aiming to increase that fee and has enlisted her dear friend, State Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, to get the law changed.

Senate Bill 110, which was filed by Peterson in March and is currently awaiting a final vote in the Louisiana House, would revise the law to allow the City of New Orleans to raise its collection fee from 2% to 4%. An extra 2% might not sound like much, but consider that OPSB’s gross tax revenues in F.Y. 2018 were $169.3 million. If OPSB had been charged a 4% collection fee, $6.8 million in school funds would have been siphoned off into the city’s general fund. In fact, if S.B. 110 becomes law, it’s estimated that schools could end up losing $75 for every student they serve.

That isn’t pocket change and it’s not hard to imagine that school leaders, parents, and other community members might take issue with the fee hike. That may explain why the Cantrell Administration hasn’t exactly advertised the fact they’re gunning for a bigger slice of the tax pie. While the Mayor has been candid about the city’s need to raise revenue, and has offered several possible options toward that end, their proposal to increase the tax collection fee has been left unmentioned. Moreover, sources say that the Mayor’s office didn’t even give OPSB a courtesy heads-up about their plan to pursue a fee hike in the legislature. Instead, district officials only found out about the bill last week, after it had already cleared the Senate and was working its way through the House.

As Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry pointed out in an op-ed hilariously entitled, “Mayor Cantrell, apparently serious, boasts of her transparency,” the Mayor “gives the public information on a need-to-know basis, and generally governs as if we never do.” It seems she’s using the same approach in her dealings with the Orleans Parish School Board. Even though the Cantrell Administration insists its “committed to working with OPSB,” when the Mayor interferes in the district’s affairs and tries to seize millions in OPSB funds, it looks a lot more like she’s working against it.

Maybe it’s time for folks in the #CityOfYes to send a message to the Mayor: When it comes to our public schools, she should #JustSayNo.

Read Senate Bill 110:

This post Pro-Tip: Don’t Confuse Mayor With Emperor appeared first on PE + CO.

That bias is abundantly evident in their misleading, clickbait-y headlines about New Orleans schools, their continued promotion of the imperceptive and vacuous ramblings of failed former New Orleans charter school CEO Andre Perry, or their publication of any number of “gotcha pieces” about the city’s school reforms, which come across as little more than cheap shots.

Thus, it wasn’t all that shocking when the Hechinger Report recently published an article using the debate over the fate of McDonogh #35 High School as a vehicle to attack charter schools. On the other hand, I was surprised and disappointed to discover that the author of this hatchet job was Jess Clark, the education reporter at our local NPR-affiliate WWNO, whose previous reporting I’ve always found to be pretty fair.

Clark’s portrayal of the McDonogh #35 saga misses or ignores critical parts of the story. Moreover, her contention that the school’s academic troubles can be blamed on charters is not only disingenuous, but downright illogical. Therefore, in an effort to correct the record, I’ve annotated her article to point out various omissions, challenge her misrepresentations, and provide a fuller and more accurate story of McDonogh #35. To read those annotations, simply click on the link below.

This post An Anti-Charter Hatchet Job, Annotated appeared first on PE + CO.

The board members in question, Janice Janz and Helene Derbigny, are both employees of UNO. Janz is an Associate Professor of Professional Practice in the department of Education and Human Development. Derbigny is a Teacher in Residence in Curriculum and Instruction and coordinates the university’s student teaching program.

As the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools explains in an overview of state ethics laws regarding conflicts-of-interest, charter school board members are prohibited from participating in any transaction between the school and their employer, meaning that they must recuse themselves from votes on those transactions.

Nevertheless, minutes from Hynes board meetings stretching all the way back to December 2017 show that Janz and Derbigny repeatedly failed to recuse themselves from votes on agenda items involving the Hynes-UNO partnership and therefore likely violated state law.

Here’s a breakdown of each instance in which Janz and/or Derbigny failed to recuse themselves due to a conflict-of-interest:

Hynes Board Meeting: December 4, 2017

At the December 2017 meeting of the Hynes board, members were asked to approve a “conceptual framework of replicating Hynes Charter School on the campus of the University of New Orleans.” Hynes CEO Michelle Douglas made a presentation to the board in which she outlined the benefits for the UNO, which included “expanded research and observation opportunities with elementary students” for “next generation teachers.”

According to minutes from this meeting, both Janz and Derbigny were present and voted to “approve and allow Prinicpal Douglas to pursue the opportunity further.”

Hynes Board Meeting: February 26, 2018

At their February 2018 meeting, Hynes board members were asked to vote on a resolution to approve the submission of a packet of “intent to replicate” documents to the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) for the new Hynes-UNO campus.

According to minutes from this meeting, both Janz and Derbigny voted to approve the resolution to allow Hynes CEO Michelle Douglas to submit the packet to OPSB.

Hynes Board Meeting: August 6, 2018

The August 2018 meeting of the Hynes board meeting was particularly interesting (and by that I mean, unintentionally hilarious).

Minutes from the meeting show that Janz and Derbigny once again failed to recuse themselves from voting to approve an agreement between the school and UNO. In this case, it was a letter of intent (seen below) with university to pursue a long-term lease to property on UNO’s Lakefront Campus where they would construct a new facility to house the new Hynes-UNO expansion school.

At the same meeting, the board also was asked to approve and submit a “Board Governance Assurance Form” to OPSB, in which the board acknowledged its responsibility to comply with state laws and policies on charter school management and affirmed that each board member had completed a one-hour ethics training course offered by the Louisiana Board of Ethics.

Ironically, just minutes after they most likely violated state ethics laws, Janice Janz offered a motion to authorize the board chair to complete and sign the Board Governance Assurance Form, which was seconded by Helene Derbigny.

Hynes Board Meeting: October 29, 2018

Although Helene Derbigny did not attend the October 2018 meeting of the Hynes board, Janz voted to approve a motion allowing Hynes CEO Michelle Douglas to officially open the new Hynes-UNO school, beginning with three kindergarten classes, in the fall of 2019.

According to minutes from the meeting, the vote followed a series of presentations on various aspects of the replication plan, including one from Adams & Reese attorney Lee Reid, who explained that the children of UNO employees would receive an enrollment preference at the new campus.

Unfortunately, Reid didn’t draw on his knowledge of the law to advise Janz to recuse herself from the vote due to her clear conflict-of-interest.

Hynes Board Meeting: January 14, 2019

Minutes from the January 2019 meeting of the Hynes board indicate that Helene Derbigny was once again absent. However, that didn’t stop her colleague, Janice Janz, from voting to approve a memorandum of understanding with UNO, which detailed the roles and responsibilities of both parties in opening the new Hynes expansion school.

Process and perceptions matter

As I detailed in my previous post on this issue, there has been a concerted effort by officials of both Hynes and OPSB to avoid public scrutiny and discussion of the plan to give the children of UNO employees an edge in the admissions process at the new Hynes campus.

When asked directly about the admissions agreement by WWL’s Caresse Jackman, Hynes CEO Michelle Douglas straight-up lied, claiming that discussions with UNO were in the preliminary stages, when in fact they had already concluded an agreement.

When OPSB officials announced that a new Hynes campus was opening last fall, they assiduously avoided mentioning that an admissions preference was part of the deal (and documents show they had been in discussions with Hynes about it since early 2018). In fact, the first time district officials acknowledged they were planning to allow Hynes to give preference to children of UNO employees was at OPSB’s Accountability Committee meeting on Tuesday. (Nevertheless, in an unanimous vote, the committee advanced the plan for consideration by the full board this Thursday.)

Now comes the question of whether members of Hynes’ board violated state ethics laws in approving this partnership with UNO. When combined with the lying and overall lack of transparency, the whole thing looks shady. If OPSB approves this plan nonetheless, they may make folks at UNO and Hynes happy, but they will further erode the trust and goodwill of the citizens they serve, many of whom (with good reason) already believe that the system is rigged. They will also give added credibility to the malcontents and paid activists who appear at every OPSB meeting to spout lies and conspiracy theories and harangue the board.

If OPSB is truly committed to equity, transparency, and good governance, they should hit the pause button on this plan, stop making exceptions to the rules we have in place, and engage with the community in an open and honest fashion.

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“We are very thankful to see this partnership come to fruition as a way to expand our high-performing schools to other families in the city,” Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) Supt. Henderson Lewis said in a statement on the expansion. “Not only will this partnership help us achieve our goal of increasing the number of students attending ‘A’ and ‘B’ schools, but it will also give our students an incentive to strive in higher education.”

But what Lewis never mentioned is that the children of UNO employees will be granted an enrollment preference at the new school, meaning that the University of New Orleans will be given open seats at one of the city’s most sought-after public schools to use as a perk for current and prospective faculty members.

In fact, officials from both OPSB and Hynes have conspicuously avoided any discussion of the admissions preference plan, most likely because they know that many community members (myself included) would view this arrangement as a betrayal of the district’s professed commitment to provide equitable access to schools. Instead, they’ve apparently decided to pursue a strategy of silence and obfuscation in the hopes that the deal between Hynes and UNO would fly under-the-radar.

And for a while, at least, the approach seemed to work. Local news stories on the Hynes expansion announcement were uniformly positive, echoing the message that the new campus would open up more seats for families seeking a spot at the A-rated school. Meanwhile, none of the coverage addressed the fact that the children of UNO employees would be given an edge in the admissions process, as reporters were kept in-the-dark about the plan.

The full story only recently came to light thanks to reporting from WWL’s Caresse Jackman, who learned about the admissions preference after UNO administrators sent out an email in late-January to faculty and staff which said that children of university employees who live in Orleans Parish would be given priority in enrolling at the new school.

In a statement to WWL, Hynes CEO Michelle Douglas acknowledged the school was discussing a possible enrollment preference with UNO, but insisted those conversations were still in their early stages:

“Hynes is exploring the possibility of a community partnership with the University of New Orleans in the opening of our new school, which includes locating our facility on UNO’s Campus. We are in the preliminary stages of planning and will follow the letter of law allowed in all aspects of the partnership. We will provide information to the public as soon as we are able.”

Truth vs. Lies

However, internal UNO documents, which I obtained through a public records request, show that Douglas’ statement to WWL was a lie. (It should also be noted that she is currently slow-walking a public records request that I submitted to Hynes.)

While Douglas maintained that plans with UNO were still in the “preliminary stages,” these documents show that Hynes had already finalized a partnership agreement with the University of New Orleans.

On January 25th – the day after Jackman’s story aired on WWL – UNO president John Wicklow sent a letter to the head of the Board of Supervisors of the University of Louisiana System (of which UNO is a part) requesting approval of an memorandum of understanding with Hynes. In the attached M.O.U., Hynes agreed to give “a fifteen (15%) percent enrollment preference for dependent children of permanent employees of UNO.” In exchange, the university would grant Hynes a long-term lease (at a cost of $1 per year) for a parcel of land on their Lakefront Campus where the new school will ultimately reside.

Other public records make clear that an admissions priority for UNO employees was part of the plan from the very beginning. In September 2017, more than a year before the Hynes expansion was officially announced, a “Feasibility and Concept Analysis” of the UNO-Hynes partnership was developed for the university by Dr. Rose Drill-Peterson. In her report, Drill-Peterson suggested that UNO and Hynes seek an enrollment preference for children of UNO employees, as well as a preference for families residing within the 70122 zip code.

Later, under a section entitled “Political Threats and Challenges,” Drill-Peterson warned that there “could be some backlash” from education leaders and activists against an enrollment preference, but ultimately points out “it could serve as a major benefit for UNO employees.”

Finally, in her conclusion, Drill-Peterson listed a series of next steps for UNO and Hynes officials to pursue, including the recommendation that “discussions with EnrollNOLA [which oversees OneApp] and the Orleans Parish School Board should occur to determine if the focus can be on a community school with 70122 zip-code-preference as well as a preference for the dependents of UNO faculty and staff.”

The Complicity of OPSB

According to a source at OPSB, Hynes and UNO officials were able to get district officials to agree to an enrollment preference in which 15% of the available seats at the new Hynes campus will be set aside each year for the children of full-time UNO employees. This means that about 12 of the 75 open seats available for the first kindergarten class this fall will already be off-the-table.

Nevertheless, you wouldn’t know this from looking at the information available about the new school’s admissions process on the EnrollNOLA website. Perhaps that’s because they’re waiting for the U of L board to officially approve the Hynes-UNO agreement, which is scheduled for a vote next Friday, February 22nd (which also happens to be the last day to submit an application through OneApp).

But here’s the kicker: My source tells me that Supt. Lewis, who believes he has the authority to unilaterally approve the admissions preference deal, won’t be presenting it for approval by the school board – i.e., there won’t be an opportunity for public debate and public input on the plan.

OPSB already allows Hynes to game the system

Furthermore, OPSB has already allowed Hynes tip the scales in its favor in other ways.

While district officials describe Hynes as one of the highest performing open-enrollment schools in the city, the reality is a bit more complicated. To start, the school has a free pre-K program, but it’s only open to gifted and talented students, which means the three and four year-olds seeking a spot must earn a high score on an “an individually administered test of intellectual abilities.” This also means it pretty much eliminates Hynes’ pre-k program as an option for low-income families. One added benefit of gaining entry to Hynes’ elite pre-K program is that those students are guaranteed a spot in kindergarten and you can be certain that nearly all of the families with kids in the pre-K program take Hynes up on the offer.

For those families who can’t get their children into Hynes’ pre-K program, snagging an open kindergarten seat is pretty much the only chance they have to get into the school, as very few seats open up in subsequent grades. Still, a confluence of factors end up keeping most low-income families out.

First of all, certain students get priority in enrollment, such as siblings of students currently attending Hynes. OneApp then sets aside 25% of available seats for applicants who reside within a half-mile of the school and up to 42% of available seats for students who reside in the 70124 zip code.

However, this zip code preference is unique to Hynes. OneApp generally sets aside 25% of the available seats for students within a half mile of the school and another 25% for students who live within the school’s geographic zone. So when OneApp assigns students to Harriet Tubman Charter School in Algiers, for example, 25% of the available seats will go to applicants within a half mile of the school and another 25% will go to children who live in Zone VII (in purple in the map below). The rest of the seats will go to children from across the city.

Yet when Hynes finally joined OneApp in 2017, OPSB allowed them (again, without any public debate on the matter) to opt-out of geographic zone system (they are in Zone V in blue above) and instead agreed to set aside seats for students within their zip code. And because Hynes is located in Lakeview, one of the wealthier areas of city, the students who end up in those spots tend to be whiter and more affluent than the city as a whole.

As a result, Hynes students look drastically different than those of just about every other open-enrollment school in the city. According data compiled by the Louisiana Department of Education, only 32% of Hynes’ current students are low-income, as opposed to 84% of public school students in the city as a whole. Moreover, while the 82% of the students in New Orleans public schools are African-American, only 35% of the students enrolled at Hynes are black.¹

OPSB has an equity and transparency problem

Back in 2016, I wrote an article for The 74 in which I looked at why some members of the education community were wary about the return to local control. One of the main reasons was that OPSB had been slow to embrace the policies that the Recovery School District had established to promote equity, such as OneApp, the city’s unified enrollment system.

As former New Schools for New Orleans co-CEO Michael Stone explained in an interview for the piece:

“The RSD has not only demonstrated a commitment to providing equitable access to schools, but has continually looked for the next intervention that will meet the needs of the most vulnerable kids in our city… OPSB has either been apathetic about those issues or was brought into those conversations kicking and screaming.”

Given what we now know about backroom admissions deal between Hynes and UNO, those concerns about OPSB’s commitment to equity appear to be justified. The district is trying to surreptitiously ram through an admissions preference at a public school, funded by taxpayers and nominally open-enrollment, without any public scrutiny or debate.

If this is the way OPSB is going to operate, it doesn’t bode well for the future of public education in New Orleans.

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“Often, journalists fly in and build their stories around the loudest, most extreme voices in the debate, folks who apply their preconceived notions and ideologies to the New Orleans context. There have also been plenty of examples of less scrupulous “journalists” who distort New Orleans’ story to further their political agendas. What’s more, the perspectives of those most impacted by the city’s reforms – i.e., public school students and parents – are seldom solicited, nonetheless heard in the reporting. As a result, national coverage of the city’s schools rarely manages to step back from the debate and objectively assess what’s worked, what hasn’t, and what still needs to be done.”

In the intervening five years, I’ve called out scores of reporters for writing sloppy, one-sided articles about the city’s school system, all of which follow a predictable formula, generally quote the same handful of people (while curiously never asking basic questions about their ties or motivations), and invariably get the story wrong.

Nevertheless, the garbage stories about public education in New Orleans just keep on coming. Case-in-point: “The Battle for New Orleans Public Schools,” an article from freelance journalist Zoe Sullivan that recently appeared in Next City.

To put it bluntly, Sullivan’s story is advocacy masquerading as journalism. She gets her facts wrong, makes several misleading claims, and selectively omits relevant information throughout the article. Moreover, the topic involved and the cast of characters featured in the piece suggest that Sullivan was fed a story which she was more than happy to promote.

And once again, it’s the same ideologically-driven, nuance-free story that many so-called journalists have written before, in which the pre-Hurricane Katrina school system’s problems are minimized, the progress that schools have made since the storm is called into doubt, and readers are left with the false impression that the community wants to do away with the city’s charter schools.

Below I outline some of the biggest problems with Sullivan’s article…

She cherrypicks data and doesn’t check her facts.

Sullivan begins her article by claiming that “black teachers now make up less than half of the city’s teaching corps,” citing a 2016 article in Slate, which in turn, cites a report based on data from 2014. So, the numbers she’s using are five years old.

However, had Sullivan taken the time to conduct a little internet research, she would have learned that a majority of the district’s teachers are indeed black. According to teacher data compiled by the Cowen Institute at Tulane University, just over half of the city’s educators were African-American and nearly 60% were people of color in the 2017-18 school year.

Sullivan also has trouble getting her facts right when she turns to the recent debate over the fate of McDonogh #35, a storied New Orleans high school that was once one of the highest-performing schools in the city, but has been struggling academically over the past several years.

In describing the school’s plight, Sullivan blames McDonogh #35’s academic decline on the state’s takeover of most of the city’s schools after Hurricane Katrina:

“The school was founded in 1917 as the first public high school in the state for black children…The school had an outstanding record until the early aughts but went into decline after Katrina — when its selective admissions system was eliminated under state management. By 2017, the state ranked it as a “D” school.”

There’s just one big problem: McDonogh #35 was never taken over by the state.

McDonogh #35’s high academic performance meant that it was one of the few schools that escaped state takeover by the Recovery School District in 2005. It has remained under the direct control of the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) ever since. Furthermore, the board voluntarily decided to jettison McDonogh #35’s selective-admissions system when the school reopened after the storm because families who were returning to the city needed to get their children back in school as quickly as possible. So, contrary to Sullivan’s claim, state officials had absolutely nothing to do with McDonogh #35’s academic slump.

Instead, that responsibility falls squarely on OPSB, which last month voted to hand over the management of McDonogh #35 to InspireNOLA Charter Schools, a local, black-led charter network with a proven track-record of turning around failing schools. Sullivan insists, “alumni see closing McDonogh 35 as inflicting a wound.” However, as noted above, the school isn’t technically closing; it’s simply being transferred to new management. Moreover, the insinuation that alums were united in their opposition is hard to square with the fact the McDonogh #35 Alumni Association recently announced it was partnering with InspireNOLA to launch a new student recruitment campaign aimed at boosting enrollment at the school next fall.

Sullivan’s disregard for truth continues when she attempts to downplay the progress that the city’s public schools have made over the past 14 years. Although she mentions that an in-depth study by Doug Harris at Education Research Alliance at Tulane “found that academic achievement in New Orleans improved substantially after the takeover,” Sullivan makes sure to note that performance dipped (not plummeted) over the past couple years. She then goes on to mention that the state’s school accountability formula changed in 2018, which she says makes “it difficult to compare with previous years.”

However, that’s only half right. It’s true that Louisiana changed their school accountability formula in 2018 – along with every other state in the country – to align with the new requirements of the Every Students Succeeds Act. (It’s also worth noting that changes adopted in the Bayou State actually make it harder for schools to receive a good grade.) But last year, the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) also intentionally issued two sets of school grades in 2018 – one set calculated with the new formula and the other with the old formula – to allow the public to directly compare school performance across years.

So, it wasn’t difficult at all to compare year-over-year performance of New Orleans schools in 2018, which Sullivan would have realized had she bothered to simply look at the raft of accountability data LDOE provides on its website.

Sullivan later takes a swing at charter schools more broadly, citing a study from the Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University to suggest that charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools:

“A 2015 study issued by Stanford’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes examined 41 school districts and found that charter students in 26 cities outperformed their traditional school peers in math. But in 11 urban areas, charter students did worse in math. There were similar findings for reading scores.”

For one thing, it’s unclear why Sullivan would cite this as evidence that charters perform no better than traditional public schools, since the research showed that they outperformed in a majority of cities. Nevertheless, the bigger issue is that she omits the fact that this very same study showed that New Orleans charter students outperform their peers in traditional public schools in both math and reading.

She doesn’t acknowledge who her sources really are.

Another major problem with Sullivan’s piece is that while she interviews several individuals in her story, she doesn’t fully disclose who they are in terms of their backgrounds, affiliations, etc.

Take Ashana Bigard, for example, who is prominently featured throughout the article. Sullivan leaves readers with the impression that she is just your average New Orleans public school parent who is fed up with the school system.

In reality, she’s an activist and organizer whose work is funded by the teachers unions. She’s one of fifteen Progressive Education Fellows (a list that includes several prominent anti-education reform voices) who are paid to write and promote anti-charter diatribes which are published by the magazine, The Progressive. Annual reports filed with the U.S. Department of Labor show that the National Education Association (NEA) and American Federation of Teachers (AFT) bankrolled the project. She’s also a consultant for Friends & Families of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, an organization that gets funding from from two organizations – the Schott Foundation and the Advancement Project – which together have received nearly $2 million from AFT and NEA over the past five years. Sullivan never reveals any of this.

This same transparency problem comes up when Sullivan throws in a quote from Andre Perry, who she says, “studied education in New Orleans for years after Katrina.” First, it should be clarified that “studied education” is a bit of a stretch, since what Perry essentially does is draw on other people’s research and repackage it for public consumption. Sullivan also leaves out a key part of Perry’s biography: He was once was the CEO of a New Orleans charter school network. (In an interview with The Gambit in 2009, he explained how he got the job: “Eventually someone called my bluff and said, ‘Hey, you talk a big game. How about trying to run some schools?'”)

His short tenure at the helm of Capital One/New Beginnings Charter Schools was a complete disaster. His schools suffered from poor performance, high suspension rates, and before he knew it he was shown the door. Given that fact, most journalists would probably turn to someone else for an unbiased view on charters or, at the very least, give readers a clearer picture of his background.

But perhaps the most laughable part of the article comes from an interview with Armtrice Cowart, a local public school parent who has shown up at several recent OPSB meetings to harangue the board. Sullivan quotes her as she indulges in some historical revisionism about the pre-Katrina school system:

“It wasn’t as horrible as [charter school proponents] try to make it seem. We had great teachers. We had great things happening in our schools. What we didn’t have, honestly, was the resources and the money that these charter schools and charter boards were getting after Katrina.”

Let’s get something straight: The pre-Katrina school system was actually horrible. It was the second lowest-performing district in a state which perennially has been at or near the bottom of national education rankings. Nearly half of public school students didn’t graduate from high school. Most school buildings were in a sorry state of disrepair. Corruption pervaded nearly every level of the school system. In short, anyone who experienced the educational disaster that was New Orleans Public Schools prior to the storm would have to be delusional to assert otherwise.

Sullivan also never mentions that part of the reason why schools didn’t have the resources and money they needed back then is that Cowart and others were literally robbing the district blind. In 2004, Cowart was one of eight school system employees indicted by the U.S. District Attorney’s Office under the Hobbs Act for her participation in a scheme that defrauded the district of $70,000. She eventually pled guilty to the charges.

In light of this fact, Cowart’s nostalgia for the old days begins to make sense: It was a complete free-for-all in which the adults running the district could enrich themselves at the expense of kids… at least until the FBI showed up. What doesn’t make sense is that Sullivan would consider her a reliable source for this story.

While there are other problems in Sullivan’s recent article on New Orleans schools, I’ll give it a rest because I think I’ve made my point. No self-respecting reporter – or editor, for that matter – would consider this a fair and balanced take on the state of the city’s public schools.

The difference between journalism and advocacy is that the former starts with the facts to develop a narrative, while the latter starts with a narrative and tries to find facts to support it. The numerous problems in Sullivan’s piece make clear that she was pushing an agenda, not seeking the truth.

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OPSB District 1 representative John Brown, who has served as board president for the past two years, cannot run for re-election due to term limits. As a result, members have been engaged in behind-the-scenes discussions in recent weeks to decide who will assume the board’s top post.

According to sources privy to those conversations, Leslie Ellison, who represents District 4 and currently serves as the board’s vice-president, has emerged as a leading contender to replace Brown at the helm. However, given her history of homophobic remarks and her retrograde positions on LGBT rights, electing Ellison as OPSB president would be completely unacceptable.

A history of homophobia

Ellison’s anti-LGBT views are well-documented and stretch back to at least 2004 when she organized a rally at the state capitol in Baton Rouge to oppose a series of bills that would have extended discrimination protections to gay and lesbian citizens.

According to an article in The Advocate, Ellison organized the gathering at the behest of Apostle Willie Wooten, the founder of Gideon Christian Fellowship in Gentilly, where she attends church and works as an administrator. Wooten has drawn national attention for his homophobic beliefs and has said that homosexuality is “deviant” and “too nasty.” He has also been an outspoken opponent of marriage equality, arguing that same-sex marriage would open the door to the legalization of polygamy and incest.

Thanks to the efforts of Ellison and Wooten, all four of the bills in question eventually went down in defeat.

A few years later, in 2012, Ellison was back at the state capitol to testify in support of a bill that would have allowed charter schools to discriminate against LGBT students, employees, and service providers. (Yes, you read that correctly.)

In an appearance before the Senate Labor and Industrial Committee, Ellison, who at the time was board chair of the now-defunct Milestone-SABIS charter school, told lawmakers that she refused to sign a charter renewal contract with the Louisiana Department of Education because it included a clause prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

But the ugliness of Ellison’s prejudice was most clearly revealed in a caustic exchange with fellow board member Seth Bloom during an OPSB meeting the following year.

As the board prepared to vote on a series of updates to the district’s anti-bullying policy, which specifically included protections for gay and lesbian students, Ellison offered an amendment that would have stripped that language from the document.

Bloom, who is gay, reacted to her motion by saying, “I just find it perplexing that certain minorities seek protection for certain minorities but not for others.” To which Ellison snapped back: “This has nothing to do with being black. I can’t change my blackness at all.”

Ellison’s insinuation that being gay or lesbian is a matter of personal choice – an idea that neither science nor logic supports – drew audible gasps from the audience. Nevertheless, she didn’t stop there. Ellison also tried to block a requirement that schools integrate the board’s anti-bullying guidelines with their curriculum and disciplinary policies. In explaining her position, Ellison made the absurd assertion that it would force schools to teach 5 year-olds about gay sex (it didn’t and hasn’t).

OPSB needs to send the right message

Although Ellison hasn’t had the opportunity to publicly weigh-in on these issues in the past few years, there is no reason to believe her views have radically changed. According to campaign finance reports filed with the Louisiana Board of Ethics, Ellison’s failed 2015 state senate campaign willingly accepted $2000 in contributions from the Family Resource Council, a D.C.-based activist group that opposes equal rights for LGBT citizens, promotes the thoroughly-debunked practice of “gay conversion therapy,” and is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In light of these facts, it’s hard to understand why so many members of the Orleans Parish School Board are apparently willing to consider Ellison for president. After all, had Ellison made racist or anti-semitic remarks, her bid for school board president would be a non-starter. So why would prejudice be OK when it comes to gay, lesbian, and transgender individuals?

It’s a question worth asking. As WWNO’s Jess Clark reported just this past week, GLSEN (formerly known as the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network) released the results of a national survey of LGBT students that illustrates the tragic impact that prejudice has in their lives. In Louisiana, the statistics were particularly disturbing: nearly 80% of LGBT students reported they were verbally harassed at school due to their sexual orientation or gender expression, 32% had heard school staff make homophobic remarks, and nearly 20% were victims of physical assault.

If Ellison is elected board president, the board will be sending a message to these kids, who struggle with hatred everyday, that homophobia is fine and their basic rights and dignity as LGBT individuals doesn’t really matter.

I hope that’s something our school board members keep in mind before they cast their votes this week.

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