Because of the city’s all-charter school system, school closures have become one of the city’s ongoing winter traditions. This week, students, families and staff at four New Orleans charters were anxiously awaiting word on whether their schools will remain open beyond May.
This year’s closures are complicated by a surprise budget shortfall and declining enrollment.
Enrollment has steadily fallen over the last decade, leaving empty seats and strained budgets at under-enrolled schools across the city. There’s no way to resolve this problem without shuttering or merging some city schools, school officials have said.
The growing budget shortfall for the district is also at the top of officials’ minds.
The projected budget gap started at $20 million and rose last month to $36 million. This week, officials warned it could top $49 million.
While hired accountants are scouring the district’s books to get to the bottom of the budget shortfall, top district staff is focused on charter contracts — with renewals for schools with passing grades and closures for those with failing grades.
Meanwhile, about those charter contracts, they're closing schools again. Here is how that is going to work this time.
Separately, district officials want Dr. Martin Luther King Charter School for Sci Tech to close its high school grades at the end of the school year due to chronically low enrollment and poor academic performance. The district would allow the school to continue operating kindergarten through eighth grade.
If the high school closes, it will leave the Lower 9th Ward without any high schools.
There is an alternate history where we rebuilt stable communities after Katrina by investing in the social infrastructure that supports families and children instead of the chaotic "experiment" in privatization we have now. That project has all but ensured the destruction of the neighborhoods. Two decades after the floods, New Orleans feels like a poor shadow of what it once was. In addition to the mass displacement of people from the city, those who do live here now experience a disorienting alienation. The rooted sense of space felt by previous generations is gone. That's not all because of the annual school shuffling but certainly this does not help.
This year, only 185 students were enrolled in the high school, reflecting a steep drop-off over the last five years.
More than 85% of its students live outside the Lower 9th Ward. Most high-school age students in the neighborhood attend other high schools, largely Frederick Douglass, Warren Easton, G. W. Carver and McDonogh 35.
Maybe the system shouldn't be set up this way. Maybe a more holistic and supportive investment in all of the city's schoolchildren is a better way to do things than playing an "accountability" Squid Game with everyone every year. Maybe someone in position to make policy should do something about that.
Or they could just shrug their shoulders. They do like to do that too.
Dale Simeon, the high school's counselor, warned against closing the school.
"When children are a part of the community and they are disrupted," she said. "Sometimes they never recover."
She argued King isn't "failing" and that data used to assess the school, including graduation rates and the rigor of classes, isn't accurate. She made the same claims at the school's renewal hearing but didn't present any evidence.
Other community members criticized the fidelity of the renewal process. They said they believed that no matter what the high school did, the board would close it, reflecting a lingering mistrust between some New Orleanians and the school district since Hurricane Katrina.
Parents from King and The Arthur School said they wished the board would intervene to help schools get back on track rather than shut them down.
(Olin) Parker, the board member, reminded them that's not how a charter model works.
"Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the way our system is set up is schools are granted additional autonomy in exchange for accountability," he said.
"Unfortunately or fortunately." It could be bad or good. We aren't really here to say. We're just the school board. Stop asking us. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting accountants who can resolve a budget too.
UPDATE: I guess there's no way to know whether the accounting errors have anything to do secret payouts to departing executives.
Both parties agreed not to tell the public about the settlement, unless legally required to do so.
"Unless required by law, the Employee and School Board agree not to disclose the terms, amount, or existence of this Agreement to anyone other than the Employee's attorney or financial advisor," according to the settlement, which Fox8 posted online. The news outlet said it obtained the agreement through a public records request.
The agreement was signed by Williams and board President Katie Baudouin. It was dated Nov. 14, the day the district announced Williams' departure. The agreement says both parties signed off on the language of the press release announcing her resignation, a copy of which is included in the agreement.