Who's in charge?

When you're constantly shifting the management companies in charge of each individual school building, the most unexpected and avoidable difficulties tend to surface.

Officials at a New Orleans school that is doubling as a polling location are refusing to open the school's parking lot to accommodate voters with disabilities.

The polling site, the former McDonogh No. 28 Elementary School on Esplanade Avenue, had opened its parking lot to those voters for years, long before the current charter school operator, Foundation Preparatory Charter School, moved in this summer.

But the new charter operator did not make the same accommodation for residents voting in the Nov. 6 congressional midterms, said Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal Court and Chief Elections Officer Arthur Morrell. The school's handicapped accessible ramp is located inside its parking lot.