July 1 is important for the school district. It’s the day charter school contracts begin and also marks the start of the fiscal year. One year ago, the city’s RSD charters all transferred back to the local school district’s oversight. That nearly doubled the size of the district.So remember back in 2016 when we were talking about how important the OPSB election would be that year specifically because the RSD hand over and the selection of a new superintendent would be a major pivot point in the direction of the school system? And remember also how nobody gave enough of a shit to run for hardly any of those seats besides pro-charter grifters?
Last year, the district was on track to have only one traditional school: McDonogh 35. But it ended up taking over two struggling elementary charter schools and running them directly instead.
Well, here is what happened. Nobody could have predicted it.
And as usual New Orleans is well behind the curve. We've gone all in on the privatization model at precisely the time the political winds have finally begun to blow in the other direction. With some notable exceptions, the Democratic Presidential candidates this year, led by Bernie Sanders, have taken on a decidedly more anti-charter stance this year than in their recent past.
But this is a hard-headed city in a lot of ways and there are few better examples of its hard-headedness is its commitment to segregated schools via any means possible. And make no mistake about it charter schools are segregated schools. If it seemed to the rest of the country that our city lay for a time at the cutting edge of "school reform," it is only because our hard-headedness happened to align with the fad for a while.
Anyway there is another OPSB election coming next year. Will New Orleans take that opportunity to shift direction away from its long standing tradition just because the national politics have changed a bit? Don't bet on it.
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