The metastasizing revenue error

Lost in all the back and forth negotiations and legal maneuvering  between the New Orleans Public School District and the City over finances, no one has yet adequately explained the "accounting error" that led to the schools' budget deficit in the first place. Now it turns out that the errors are not necessarily limited to NOPS only.

This story says the city may have overestimated revenue projections for this year by some $18 million. 

New Orleans officials overestimated 2024 property tax collections by $18 million, further complicating what has become a fraught year for city budgeting. 

The revelation came during the quarterly Revenue Estimating Conference, when the city’s chief economist, Matthew Cooper, said he misjudged how much of the city's assessed property taxes would actually be paid.

The error could have implications for other taxing bodies that rely on City Hall revenue estimates. The Orleans Parish School Board last year discovered a $50 million deficit, which school officials have partially blamed on bad revenue forecasting by the city.

City finances are incredibly complicated and the shortfall could be the result of multiple types of errors and shenanigans. The article emphasizes the lag effect from appeals after a reassessment year for one rather benign example. But note also, in this passage, the effect of a rapidly sickening economy.

But the overall property tax compliance rate is a combination of both real estate and business inventory taxes, and inventory compliance sagged to 78%. Inventory taxes are assessed every year, but Cooper said he didn’t know if the 2024 compliance rate is typical. He attributed it to businesses that closed and didn’t pay inventory taxes, but didn’t say if that occurred more frequently last year than other years.

“They don't want to pay their inventory if they’re out of business. They can't pay their bills in the first place,” Cooper said in a brief interview.

I'm sure the next mayor and council will figure a way out of it though.  Probably the plan will involve bigger and better tax breaks for hotel developers. 

NEW ORLEANS - After months of work with numerous stakeholders, Council Vice President Helena Moreno is introducing a proposal to create clear and concise regulations for developers to receive a Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA). For far too long, existing guidelines have been confusing to applicants, appeared inconsistent, and contained some outdated policies that do not support good development projects, nor do they ensure accountability on behalf of RTA recipients. Plus, approvals for RTAs appeared to be subjective. Moreno now wants to ensure that the determination is based on meeting criteria along with providing clarity and accountability to the program.

The Restoration Tax Abatement (RTA) Program provided by state law allows the City Council the ability to approve a tax abatement for commercial property owners and homeowners who expand, restore, improve, or develop an existing structure in a downtown development district, opportunity zone, economic development district, or historic district. If approved, the owner has the right to pay ad valorem taxes based on the assessed valuation of the property for the year prior to the commencement of the project for five years after completion of the work. 

The error that keeps on erring

They're going to have to tell us what this NOLA Public Schools "accouting error" actually is eventually, right?  Last month they tried to say an accountant forgot what a fiscal year is.  But that story didn't stick.  Now we're nowhere nearer to understanding what happened. But we do know that whatever it is, it's worse now.  

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.

There's always money in the litigation stand (also some notes on the school board race)

They say you can't fight City Hall. In New Orleans, that has been especially true. For a long time, the city was notorious for refusing to pay up on court judgments against it. This year, the city council has begun to rectify that. Though, not all at once. 

Last month, the New Orleans City Council approved legislation requiring the city to almost immediately start paying out the oldest state court judgments on its books, those dating from the late 1990s until 2006. All remaining judgments must be paid off by 2027.

The payments will consist of only the original judgment amounts without interest — a caveat that has frustrated plaintiffs in some of the oldest cases, whose claims have accrued decades’ worth of additional interest fees.

Still, if you are in a hurry, there are some tricks to getting the city to cough up. For example, if you are the Orleans Parish school system, you can... commit an "accounting error" that blows a $36 million hole in your own budget.  Suddenly, the checkbook opens! 

Amid a massive financial crisis spurred by an accounting error, the Orleans Parish School Board has agreed to dismiss a years-old lawsuit against the city of New Orleans for $20 million in cash and $70 million in funding guarantees. 

While school leaders across the city may be reassured by the quick $20 million payment, which will help plug budget holes for the 2024-25 school year, charter officials are still anxiously awaiting final details on the district’s promise to directly support their school budgets and students in the face of the shortfall that remains, which is estimated at $16 million – but may be more, depending on what financial advisors find as they look through district ledgers.

This settlement has both short-term and long-term implications. By the end of this calendar year, the city will pay the school board $10 million, with another $10 million to follow by April 1; the agreement also directs the City Council to pay an additional $70 million through education-program funding over the next 10 years. A promise education advocates are happy to have in place with council and mayoral elections coming up.

The $20 million comes in concert with a series of last minute City Council additions to the municipal budget touching on a number of needs including homeless services, staffing needs in certain departments, and the Algiers Ferry. They also added some questionable items, like $5 million for Troy Henry's Six Flags grift and $12 million for.. whatever is going on at Charity Hospital now. (Or maybe not, actually! More on both of those topics in another post later.)  

There's a bit in the Verite article where members of the council and administration pat each other on the back for cooperating to solve these problems. But the reason they were able to be somewhat generous now is because the austerity cup and ball game the Cantrell administration has played in recent years has left an outsized reserve of unspent revenues. We've written about this quite a few times, actually. Even during the pandemic, the sales tax receipts weren't as bad as Gilbert Montano's budgets projected. But the imaginary projected deficit just around the corner kept us from even spending COVID relief funds in a timely and effective manner. I've argued, and continue to believe, this was an intentional manifestation of the Cantrell administration's conservative ideology. Anyway, the city has these funds available and the council is right to use them. The fact that they weren't included in the mayor's proposal is evidence that the council had to force it to happen.  Just imagine what they could have done if the school system hadn't set itself on fire. 

Speaking of which, did you know, there is one open seat on the Orleans Parish School Board waiting to be filled?  It's on your December 7 ballot. 

The only competitive New Orleans race in the Dec. 7 runoff election will pit a political newcomer against a long-time fixture in the city’s education sector for a seat on the Orleans Parish School Board. 

Gabriela Biro, a Gentilly hairstylist and first-time political candidate, said she decided to run for the 2nd District seat because she didn’t feel comfortable voting for the other candidates running in her district. The 2nd district includes New Orleans East, Gentilly, Pontchartrain Park and the Upper 9th Ward. 

“I had been tired of choosing between the lesser of two evils in many voting instances,” Biro said. “And I was like, I’ll just do this.”

Biro came in second in the Nov. 5 primary election, where none of the three candidates for the seat cleared the 50%-plus one threshold to avoid a runoff.

Biro’s opponent, Eric “Doc” Jones, came in first in November. Jones, who previously ran for a seat on OPSB and the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, has worked in education for decades — first as a teacher and later as a charter school board member and education consultant.

It was a little bit surprising to me that the odd man out of the runoff, Entergy executive Chan Tucker, was the most heavily funded by the national charter school lobbying Death Star that has been placing candidates on school boards with relative ease for years now. Notice also that this article quotes BOTH candidates statements that suggest openness to taking more schools back from the chartering organizations.  Looks like twenty years of New Orleans's "experiment" with an all-charter school system hasn't been a fantastic experience for voters. 

Of course, anti-charter rhetoric in the runoff is a lot more believable coming from the union-endorsed newcomer than it does coming from the former charter school board member and "education consultant" who once worked as a recruiter for Teach for America. Especially now that he's adding equivocations. 

In an interview last week, Jones called the school district’s structure “dysfunctional.” He ran his initial campaign this year as a pro-district school candidate, saying that he would like the district to take over failing charter schools. His stance drew the attention of pro-charter groups, which spent over $200,000 against Jones and another pro-district candidate as they campaigned for the Nov. 5 election. Last week, Jones said the district should avoid taking over failing schools and should instead partner with them to avoid closures. Jones said he would adjust the accountability framework for schools.

Jones said he favors district oversight, but only to a point: “As long as the oversight doesn’t interfere with their day-to-day operations, it doesn’t interfere with hiring practices, it doesn’t interfere with their curriculum selection, it doesn’t interfere with their mutual contracts they have in their building.”

The district should do "oversight" that doesn't actually have anything to say about how a charter school operates.  Okay, got it. 

That article also features an amusing dialog between Jones and the reporter asking about a grade inflation scandal that got him kicked off of the Coghill Charter board as well as a series of ethics violations and resume discrepancies. To me, the funniest one was the part where we learn "pro bono" is the Latin for "give me $5000." 

Verite News confirmed that he has worked at the school, albeit in a pro bono position. In 2015, the Louisiana Board of Ethics filed charges against Jones over his employment at the school. According to the complaint, Jones worked as the school’s chief academic officer, a position for which he received no compensation. 

The ethics charge stemmed from $5,000 he invoiced the school for staff training, even though such training was part of his normal duties in the job for which he agreed to work for free. The ethics board later voted to issue a “letter of caution” to Jones, dismissing the charges.

But there's more in there I wouldn't want to spoil. Just know that Verite's questions to Jones definitely do not make him mad at all. 

Anyway, one of those candidates will be working on solutions to the school system's ongoing fiscal crisis next year.  Which one should that be?

I can't believe Taylor Swift didn't fix it

Just yesterday, we were speculating about this "accounting error" committed by someone in the Orleans Parish School District. The original T-P report we cited there claimed that staff overshot their sales tax revenue projection by $36 million "because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July." * That might be exactly what happened. But it feels unlikely. At the very least, it's got to be embarrassing for professional accountants to not understand when the fiscal year begins. Let alone, that they would look at a jump in revenue of that size and not suspect something was off. 

On the other hand, lay readers of the Times-Picayune might be forgiven for their confusion. Last week,  when we read that the board had announced a damage control plan to gradually pay back the deficit out of its (fortunately robust) fund balance, this item suggested that maybe the problem was already solved.

Schools would repay the $15 million over the next few years, hopefully bolstered by increased sales tax revenue from major events in New Orleans like Taylor Swift’s recent concert series, which generated an estimated $500 million for the city, and next year’s Super Bowl, Parker said.

Oh dear, here we go again trying to shoehorn an "economic impact of tourism" promo into a serious news story. Look, by all accounts, Swiftie weekend in New Orleans was a much welcomed success for the city's service industry and tourism facing retail.  Anecdotally, we've all heard the crowd was nice. They tipped well. And unlike some of the mega-corporate events, like the Superbowl, they spent money with local small businesses.  But mentioning the $500 number in a throwaway line about the school system's budget problems creates a false impression of whatever eventual benefit may occur.

The article doesn't link to it but they're referring to GNO Inc's estimate of how much money was spent overall by visitors during the weekend. The number is likely exaggerated to begin with, because that's what GNO Inc. does. But also it appears to include the money spent on airfare, lodging, and the concert tickets themselves. The schools do realize a portion of the sales tax on hotel rooms, but they split that money with several other entities. But we're already talking there about a fraction of a fraction of that marquee $500 million number which, again, isn't even itself a figure that reflects actual sales tax revenue.  It's fun to write "Taylor Swift might help with the budget problem" but it's important to be more specific than this. 

Anyway, as of today, none of this is Avis Williams's problem anymore. She is resigning effective December 1. Frankly, who can blame her.  The $300,000 salary must have been nice for a couple of years. But, ultimately, who wants to have to deal with this job?

After a national search to replace Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr., the board hired Williams in April of 2022. This fall, Williams opened the district’s first intentional direct-run school in the modern charter era — The Leah Chase School, a win for traditional-education advocates in the city. But the decision to create the new school within the Lafayette Academy building came amid a chaotic charter renewal process. Lafayette Academy families were first promised their school would remain open, then told it would close, then received a third message, one week later, that the school would remain open, but would be managed by the district.

But critics say that Williams has made little progress in one of the key assignments she was given when she arrived. When she arrived, she was charged with downsizing the all-charter district because local schools, mirroring national trends, face shrinking enrollment. The district asked her to create a “right-sizing” plan.  

Other district superintendents, facing similar declines, have closed schools. But in New Orleans, Williams faced a particularly unique challenge, because the city’s charter schools operate on multi-year contracts and revoking them — to close schools — is only done in serious situations. Schools only come under high-stakes scrutiny at the end of their contracts.

One could argue that a cascading budget crisis is one way to cut through all the piecemeal charter renewals and force more closures and consolidations on an accelerated timeline.   But whatever the excuse, it's no fun when you are the one swinging the ax.  

Meanwhile, there's also an open seat on the School Board that needs to be resolved by a runoff election December 7.  One of the candidates there has articulated support for having the district take more schools back from under-performing charters and run them directly. The other was once on a charter board involved in a grade inflation scandal.  Those sound like serious issues for voters to consider. Unfortunately it may all be overshadowed by the accounting issue. That is, unless we can get another 10 or 20 Eras Tours to swing through the city by the time the next tax receipts are in. 

*Additional note: Today's Lens article about the Williams resignation says the "accounting error" is still unexplained. So the, "whoops we forgot what year it is" bit from the initial reports, seems to have gone away.  According to today's article, 

Some sources say the city, which is responsible for collecting taxes and remitting them to the district, contributed to the district’s poor forecasting. It’s unclear how often the city communicates tax collection estimates with the district.

So we're moving from shady and/or incompetent accounting at the School District to shady and/or incompetent accounting at City Hall.  That's more credible, I guess, given.. (gestures broadly).. but still a mystery.

Maybe don't run your schools through a nesting doll of scam bureaucracies

You have to read past this headline about layoffs at the Rooted School. It just conveys management's side of the dispute, saying they're just forced to downsize due to a school board accounting error. Read several paragraphs into the story until you arrive at something closer to the actual issue. 

Teachers and staff at The Rooted School have been bargaining for a contract since forming a union in 2022. The four staff members who were let go were union members and UTNO has filed an unfair labor practice charge with the National Labor Relations Board related to their firings.

The charge accused Karpinski of letting the employees go before bargaining with them and offering them a severance agreement directly rather than going through the union. The complaint also says that the school violated employees' rights because the severance agreement includes a confidentiality clause and a non-disparagement clause.

And, of course, due to recent events in national politics, the Biden NLRB is in lame duck status now.  (Senate Democrats still have a chance to do something about that!  But, rest assured, they simply do not care enough to try.) So, in all likelihood, the laid off workers are at the mercy of dueling bureaucracies and their suspect administrators. Today's update in that dispute finds the School Board firing back, (mostly) on the correct side for now. 

The Orleans Parish School Board on Tuesday pushed back on claims by a New Orleans charter school that it was forced to lay off teachers due to an accounting error by the district.

Board members said Rooted School used the district’s miscalculation as an excuse to lay off four employees when in fact the school is grappling with its own financial problems. The main source of the school’s troubles is that it erroneously collected $600,000 over three years by keeping students on their rolls who had left, and now the school must pay back that money, the board members said.

Which brings us to that "accounting error."  Are we sure that's what this is? 

New Orleans public schools are getting millions of dollars less in local tax revenue this year than district officials projected, and schools across the city are bracing for the fallout from the apparent accounting gaffe. 

Typically, the district tells schools in March how much money they will have to spend for the upcoming school year, based on property and sales taxes it expects schools will receive. Schools then budget accordingly, and receive payment in piecemeal from the school district each month.

But three months into the school year, district officials said their projections were likely inflated. That was because district staffers calculated tax revenue based on a full calendar year, rather than aligning it to the fiscal year, which begins in July.

What sort of accountant actually does this?  On accident?  Maybe that's really what is going on there. But, remember, the district, under this superintendent, is under various pressures to downsize schools and divest from its facilities.  

Overall, the 2024 premium increased from $7.9 million to $12.3 million. The district’s total insured value (TIV) also increased from $1.9 billion to $2.4 billion, due to building upgrades and the increased costs of repairs, Story wrote in an email.

The exact per-pupil costs are still being finalized, Story wrote. “But based on the premium increase amount you can estimate it to be near $280, he said. This of course depends on system-wide enrollment,” Story wrote, noting the current market is “a mess.”

The district’s Total Insured Value cited by Story in his email appears to include vacant buildings in the total policy cost. To save money, the district is already looking at ways to reduce total value for vacant buildings and to shed vacant swing space that won’t be utilized.

“We are already looking at ways to modify our program for FY25 to reduce TIV for vacant buildings, swing space that won’t be utilized and other opportunities in an effort to mitigate large increases in premiums,” Story wrote.

As of the beginning of this month, only one school appeared to be on a path toward closure this year. But that was before the "error" was discovered. 

The last thing our public schools need now is another hole in the money bucket. But it does appear as though leaks are starting to spurt out from all sides.

Island hopping

The insidious thing about charterization is that it not only destroyed the union but it also set workers on a long struggle to claw it back independent school by independent school.  Nearly twenty years have passed and so far they've won 6 out of 71 schools back. 

Living School joins Rooted School, International High School, Bricolage Academy, Morris Jeff Community School and Ben Franklin High School as organized collective bargaining units. Teachers in New Orleans who do not work at a unionized school can join United Teachers of New Orleans.

A small percentage of New Orleans' 71 charter schools are unionized. After Hurricane Katrina, thousands of public school teachers were fired and schools were taken over by the Recovery School District or transformed into charters, ending the contract between the city and the union.

And, of course, in the meantime, there have been thousands of lives uprooted and communities destroyed by the charter project that will never come back. Also one of the primary villains in this plot is about to be elected mayor of Chicago today.  

When Vallas went to New Orleans in 2007, the city was still reeling from the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina, which had made landfall two years earlier. In 2003, a Democrat-controlled Louisiana legislature had taken control of schools across the state by establishing the Recovery School District (RSD), which took over “underperforming” schools, the majority of which were initially in New Orleans.

The RSD fired the district’s teachers, who were unionized and mostly Black, middle-aged professionals, and replaced them with younger, whiter, out-of-town TFA recruits. Dix Moore-Broussard, a longtime arts teacher in New Orleans, told the TRiiBE that after Katrina, the district laid everyone off. (In 2010 Duncan, who was then secretary of education, said Katrina was “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans.”)

“We got notice that they weren’t opening the schools and we could go pick up our last check,” she said. “Everybody just got $2,000, and it was the most insulting thing ever.”

But hey 6 of the 71 privatized schools now have their own little unions. Celebrate the little victories, I guess, but there's no justice here.

Give it another fifteen years, I guess

Joseph Bouie's very mild attempt at giving the Orleans Parish School Board a little bit more of a direct legislative instruction to do its ostensible job overseeing public schools in New Orleans has failed. 

Senate Bill 404 by state Sen. Joe Bouie, D-New Orleans, would have amended Act 91 — the law that returned the charter schools in the Recovery School District to the Orleans Parish School Board — to give the School Board the power to decide what freedoms charter operators should have. As it stands, decisions such as faculty and staff hires, what students learn and how they learn it are all left to individual charter operators. 

Despite its death, the bill and surrounding debate lay bare the tensions that still exist between pro-charter groups and those who see the system as an experiment that worsens inequalities in public education. 

In an interview this week, Bouie said he senses momentum building among residents and families for a change to the public school system, despite the bill's failure. 

“It was a hard sell legislatively, but the community’s response is getting stronger and stronger,” Bouie said. “All that support was really the result of the last 15 years, and what our communities know as the state-sponsored educational experiment.

Not sure we've got another 15 years to "build momentum."   The very idea that all children have a right to public education is fading. It's not clear there how much longer there will even be a school system here.  

Applications to enroll in NOLA Public Schools district charter schools — including new students and those seeking transfers — dropped by nearly 30 percent between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2021-2022 school year, according to a report presented to the Orleans Public School Board on Thursday. While some of that can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the upcoming school year has seen a slight recovery, officials and experts believe the overall trend will be downward in the coming years, following a slow-down in the city’s population growth over the past decade, and a more recent decline in the past few years. 

School board members heard the report on declining enrollment at their Thursday night meeting, part of a process NOLA Public Schools officials have called “right-sizing” the district, which could include more closures and consolidations of city charter schools.

It's easy to say that enrollment is declining because nobody actually lives here anymore.  

Declining public school enrollment comes as the city has experienced slower population growth over the past several years. 

After New Orleans’ massive post-Katrina loss of residents, the population grew quickly in the early part of the last decade. Yearly Census estimates put the city at well over 390,000 residents, up from 343,000 in the 2010 Census. But that growth slowed as the city approached the 2020 Census. And New Orleans’ official 2020 Census count was about 384,000, 

Reid noted that a slower rate of people moving to New Orleans and lower birth rates have come as the city has become significantly less affordable for families, noting that housing prices have “increased incredibly” in the last five years.

But, then, it's just as important to understand the denial of core public services, such as a functioning school system, is a key contributor to that phenomenon.  No doubt the "right sizing" of the district will provide opportunities to sell off property to real estate investors. So we can build more nice things for rich people. Where nobody actually lives.  

Been watching them play this game for.. well, for over 15 years now. We know how it goes.

Ony 76 more to go

 Four is, of course, one more than three but -- there is much more work to be done. 

Right now, only three other New Orleans charter schools -- Morris Jeff Community School, Benjamin Franklin High School and International High School -- active unions, out of about 80 public charters in the city.

Since they are run by independent boards, charters have more autonomy than traditional public schools and each management organization can make its own hiring and firing decisions.

In a news release, pro-union Bricolage teachers said they hoped to demonstrate to staff in other charter schools that unionization can be accomplished with enough solidarity.

Maybe this will help pick up the pace?  Remember the event from which the teachers are trying to recover happened in the blink of an eye. Also it happened almost 16 years ago. 

The Bricolage union is affiliated with the citywide teachers union United Teachers of New Orleans. UTNO represented educators throughout the city prior to the post-Katrina takeover of New Orleans public schools by the state-run Recovery School District. UTNO President Wanda Richard, Larry Carter, president of the statewide union Louisiana Federation of Teachers, and state Rep. Royce Duplessis were present on Friday and encouraged a union vote.

“We believe all teachers — no matter where they teach — deserve to have a seat at the table in this city,” Duplessis said.

Haven't had a "seat at the table" in this city for almost a generation now. 

Four out of 80

Years of organizing work to get to point where there would be four schools out of the 80 charters in New Orleans where the staff are unionized. That is, if BAE is successful. 

The vote is set for May 28, according to the release issued by United Teachers of New Orleans, a citywide union and local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers that has helped the charter school educators organize.

Bricolage Academy Educators, collectively known as BAE-United, spent weeks petitioning the school's governing charter board to voluntarily recognize their union. 

Bricolage organizers have said 80% of eligible teachers and staff signed a petition in favor of organizing, and they submitted the request to the school's board of directors in late February.

Eighty percent of the staff signed up in advance of the vote is a good sign. It's only in the last few years that teachers have gained something like momentum in the long effort to overcome structural barriers to organizing imposed by the depowering and isolating nature of the charter arrangements. When New Orleans Public Schools made the big move to charters, it not only immediately fired 7,000 people, it set back the work of reclaiming power by at least a decade.  Four out of 80 would be better than three.  But there is so much left beyond that.

Doing it the hard way

 Looks like the Bricolage board is choosing the way of pain. 

Bricolage Academy Educators United, a group of Bricolage educators seeking union recognition from the Esplanade Avenue charter school’s board, has filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board after the charter’s nonprofit board failed to respond to the group’s February request for voluntary union recognition.

Since receiving the group’s Feb. 24 letter, the board has only met once. At that meeting, on March 10, the board met in a closed door session with its lawyers for advice on the union drive. After the private discussion, board president Yvette Jones said the board must do its “due diligence” before it would take a vote on whether to recognize the union. She could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Well it's April now and they still haven't finished the "due diligence" delaying so the teachers have to ask for an NLRB election which is an arduous process that is more or less designed to prevent an organizing campaign from succeeding. That doesn't mean the teachers can't win.  The International School staff unionized via an election in 2016 but not without a fight. And the Lusher board actually beat back a similar effort.

Of course, the PRO Act legislation waiting for action in the US Congress would make things easier. Call or text your Senator.

Why lie when the facts are bad enough

Every year Joe Bouie tries to nudge us ever so slightly in the direction of untangling the corrupt nightmare system that runs our public schools "like a business."  Every year it fails.  No reason to stop trying, though. 

A state legislator who has a history of criticizing the way New Orleans schools are governed is pushing a bill in the upcoming session that would strip NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. of his power to close or renew charter schools without an Orleans Parish School Board vote.

State Senator Joseph Bouie Jr. spoke briefly with board members during their meeting Tuesday about the bill, which he has prefiled for the 2021 legislative session beginning next month. Bouie’s bill aims to undo the charter school renewal system established by a state law passed in 2016 that brought the city’s charter schools — most of which had been overseen by the state-run Recovery School District after Hurricane Katrina — back under local control. 

That law, Act 91, gives near unilateral power to the superintendent to decide which nonprofit-run charter schools up for contract renewal with the district will remain open and which ones will close. Under the current system, the board can only overturn Lewis’ recommendation with a two-thirds supermajority vote within one month of a recommendation’s presentation. 

Bouie’s proposal would require board votes on all charter renewals.

One of the principal authors of Act 91 is congressional candidate Karen Carter Peterson who, over the weekend, (just barely) slipped into a runoff against Troy Carter.  During the primary, Carter tried to make hay out of Peterson's relationship with the charter school movement. Those links do exist and voters should consider them during the runoff.  They should also, consider, however, that Troy Carter also supported Act 91 and does not appear to have taken a stand against the charter movement that meaningfully distinguishes him from Peterson. 

On the other hand, at least his attack ad acknowledged the devastating effect the charter movement has had on teachers. Leaving aside the question of his sincerity about that, it matters that it's something Peterson does not talk about unless she is refuting an opponent's accusations. Which is what happens in this article. 

Only days before Saturday’s primary, Karen Carter Peterson is calling foul on Troy Carter for a television ad that slams her and her husband on education matters.

“Troy Carter’s latest attack is a lie,” Peterson, who like Carter is a state senator from New Orleans, said in a statement.

She is correct.  Carter's ad does lie. It cherry picks certain events and compresses their timeline to imply a stronger causal relationship than the viewer would otherwise infer. I'll try to summarize this as clearly as I can.  

In 2004 Peterson sponsored a bill called Act 193 which empowered the state controlled Recovery School District (RSD) to take over so-called failing schools in Orleans Parish. Shortly after Katrina, a second bill (Act 35) enabled the RSD to take all of the schools in Orleans Parish. Peterson voted against this bill. RSD took over 102 of 117 schools and immediately fired 7000 teachers and support staff. This move effectively destroyed the teachers union and gutted what most people considered a core piece of the city's Black middle class at a critical moment. Those teachers, their union, and in many ways the whole city has never really recovered from that. The state then re-made the New Orleans Public Schools according to an experimental model of privatized autonomous charters working with largely non-union labor (although a very small number of charter school staffs have since been organized.) In 2016, Act 91, again, authored by Peterson, returned this reconfigured system to local school board's nominal control but locked the RSD's changes into place.  

Carter's ad presents this story as 1) Peterson voted for Act 193 and then 2) All of the teachers were fired. Obviously that isn't how it happened. In between those events there was a hurricane, a flood, and a thorough takeover of the schools that Peterson voted against. However, it does not get her off the hook for writing and supporting Act 91 which we can see as a validation of all of those events after the fact. She is further implicated by the close involvement of her husband and brother-in-law in the leadership of RSD and Orleans charter schools during this period although Carter's ad also fudges the facts on this so as to make it appear even more sinister. 

Which, again, causes us to question Carter's integrity as much as Peterson's.  The facts are bad enough.  But Carter is as culpable as Peterson for much of the situation being what it is so he has to lie to make it sound even worse. 

Anyway, I'm not sure when Bouie's bill is due up in the session or if Senators Carter and Peterson will be available to vote on it when it does.  The legislative session begins on April 12 and the runoff election is April 24 so it's a real tight window. Which is a shame because we might miss a key moment of truth for both of them.

Radio silence

The teachers at Bricolage Academy have formed a union associated with the United Teachers of New Orleans. This makes Bricolage only the the third school to unionize over the course of the decade and a half since UTNO's contract was torn up by the state. After the flooding associated with Hurricane Katrina that destroyed the city, some 7,000 teachers who made up the heart of the city's Black middle class, were summarily fired by the district. During the decade plus since, the balkanized and semi-privatized charter system has proven an effective obstacle to reestablishing worker power in the schools.  One might even say that is the entire point of the move in the first place.  Which may be one reason the Bricolage administration is having trouble knowing just what to say about this development.  

Board President Yvette Jones and Bricolage CEO Troave Profice did not respond to multiple requests for comment asking whether they supported the endeavor.

 

The Lost Month

New marketing campaign from the city: signs where you write what you're excited to do after this is all over.

Cantrell and Arnold say they want to promote optimism, see residents have some fun with it. pic.twitter.com/28O58etu3s

— The Lens (@TheLensNOLA) April 14, 2020

"What are you gonna do when this is over?" What hypothetical imaginary spring-festival-in-the-fall are were you most looking forward to? What sports are you planning to not go watch? Immediately after Katrina there was a similar thought experiment going around. What were we gonna do to celebrate when evacuation ended and the emergency was over? It took a while for people to realize that the Katrina emergency would never be over. Katrina changed everyone's life forever.  This event will as well.

I don't think people fully understand what's happening yet. This isn't just a lost month. It's not just an act of nature. Like every major disaster of the 21st Century, it is a moment when the oligarchic classes will further tighten their grip on wealth and power. It is a moment when grifters and political cronies will take advantage to steal whatever the panic shakes loose.The bosses are winning the pandemic.  The bosses and the thieves.

We've seen it all before up close. 

If Katrina is any guide, profiteering amid the current COVID-19 pandemic seems inevitable given the hundreds of billions of dollars that will be sloshing through the hands of businesses and officials. Within 10 days of Katrina, Congress approved $62 billion in emergency relief for the Gulf Coast. That pales in comparison to the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package already passed, including a $500 billion corporate bailout fund. Yet corporate profiteering still reached epic proportions in New Orleans and the region after Katrina.

One thing Katrina taught us was you can't put off raising questions about profiteering and corruption while the disaster is happening just because "now is not the time." The chaos is precisely the time when it all happens. Shortly after Katrina, George W Bush used the emergency to justify suspension of the prevailing wage requirements of the Davis-Bacon Act.   Last month, labor leaders in New Orleans were upset to learn that emergency contracts to set up the Convention Center field hospital had been let to out of state operators.

Some local union leaders are angered that dozens of workers have been brought in from Texas to help convert the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center into a medical facility to deal with the coronavirus crisis, at a time when hundreds of their members are out of work.

The order to convert the convention center into a facility to provide up to 3,000 beds for spillover COVID-19 patients was made by Governor John Bel Edwards two weeks ago.

Two contracts for just over $76 million were quickly put out to bid. One for about $38 million, primarily to provide medical staff and services, went to BCFS Health and Human Services, a faith-based non-profit based in San Antonio, Texas that was formerly known as Baptist Child and Family Services. The other contract to build patient's tented cubicles and related work went to Baton Rouge contractor Dynamic Construction Group.

BCFS is an umbrella non-profit that has been paid hundreds of millions of dollars for constructing and maintaining border detention facilities.  Meanwhile there is also this. 

The governor's Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness, or OHSEP, also mandated that a previous $12.79 million contract to provide isolation housing units in Bayou Segnette be changed to instead put up trailers for patients "under investigation" adjacent to the convention center, according to Casey Tingle, OHSEP deputy director and chief of staff.

Tingle said that trailer park facility will initially by staffed by medical personnel from the Medical Corps of the U.S. Navy and may later be staffed by BCFS doctors and nurses.

The contract for that spillover trailer park and associated services went to Garner Environmental Services from Deer Park, Texas, whose sub-contractors include Energy Mechanical Services from Waller, northwest of Houston, both of whose trucks and workers were parked alongside Hall G at the convention center for the past week.

The "Government Laison (sic)"  for Garner Environmental Services happens to be disgraced former Louisiana State Police Superintendent Mike Edmondson.

Maybe it seems petty to point this stuff out. But it matters because everything that slips through in a matter of minutes now is infinitely more difficult to claw back later. And sometimes that is more than just a few million misplaced dollars. Sometimes it's 351 affordable housing units.

In 2016, then-New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu adopted a five-year housing plan featuring a commitment to “build or preserve” 7,500 affordable housing units by the end of 2020. But with the deadline right around the corner, the city won’t come close to meeting that goal.

In fact, the city lost 351 affordable housing units in just the last six months, and 671 over the last two and half years.

That’s according to a new semi-annual data report from HousingNOLA, an affordable housing advocacy non-profit. HousingNOLA issues comprehensive annual report cards on the city’s progress battling the city’s affordable housing crisis, as well as semi-annual data reports to give people an idea of what to expect when the full report comes in the fall.

That's not a direct result of the COVID crisis, of course. (Although good luck affording anything anymore now that nobody has a job!)  I really wanted to bring it up here because last month we also found Mitch Landrieu on Twitter telling us about what "we saw" after Katrina.

We saw this with Katrina. The communities that had generational wealth came back much faster. You’ll see that with the people that have access to transportation and health care. The same is true with food security. Focus on equitable response.

— Mitch Landrieu (@MitchLandrieu) April 6, 2020

Which is a weird thing to say for the person who oversaw a massive exacerbation of these inequalities during his term as mayor. It isn't going into too much of a stretch to say that Mitch Landrieu helped give us the New Orleans where the consequences of COVID 19 would inevitably distribute so unevenly.


Are we, though?

Anyway, everything is broken now and whatever new normal we're left with after the grifters are done picking everything over will again greatly advantage the "generational wealth" communities Mitch is talking about. So we're going to have to think very carefully about the kinds of changes that slip through now that we won't be able to undo later. Heightened surveillance. New parade rules. There are a lot of things happening we aren't thinking about. Can you think of any reason to roll back regulations on toxic chemical emissions right now?

Also, what was going on here?

Orleans Parish School Board members on Thursday backed off a fleeting proposal to extend their superintendent’s contract after hearing criticism about the unclear, last-minute process — amid a pandemic — that members of the public said failed to rationalize the proposed move.

It’s unclear why the extension was being pushed now. NOLA Public Schools district Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr.’s contract doesn’t expire until next year. Between now and then, there will be an election for OPSB members, and any newly elected board members will take their seats. Lewis’ annual evaluation won’t be completed until this fall.

It could be nobody knows what day it is or what time it is or in what order to do things anymore so everything tries to happen at once. Or maybe they just saw an opportunity to sneak a major decision by during a moment of minimal public access. It's already a problem that public business has had to improvise virtual proceedings more likely to deviate from open meetings laws with access limited to those who can afford to surmount "digital divide" issues. This is going to become an even bigger problem as this kind of negligence gets baked into the "new normal."

It certainly seems like a moment when you would not want to be laying off reporters but here we are. The news business is really an advertising business that's spent the better part of the past four decades seeing local outlets squeezed to death by mega-corporate consolidation and then by Big Tech. So, like pretty much any other industry, journalism needs a stimulus.  However..

The stimulus package proposed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) included aid for community newspaper publishers, but that provision did not make it into the final bipartisan bill passed last week. Many newspapers can apply for small business loans, but executives say those won’t cure the industry’s underlying problems.

Speaking of the stimulus legislation, nobody seems to understand  how profoundly awful the "CARES Act" bailout is. We can't afford to fuck this up this badly in this moment. We've been asking for weeks that Congress roll out the big money gun in order to help workers and small businesses affected by the shut downs.  Instead they've been given a sclerotic SBA loan program and a $1200 check that may take months to arrive.  The money gun only fires in one direction, it seems. It fires up to where the Masters of the Universe roam.

The Fed responded by dusting off emergency lending facilities like the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, the Money Market Mutual Fund Liquidity Facility, the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, the Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility, and the Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility, all of which saw action after the crash of 2008. Each would be used to step in and buy financial products in the various markets frozen due to virus panic.

The Fed furthermore announced that on March 23rd it would begin buying $50 billion in government-backed mortgage securities, in addition to $75 billion in Treasury bills, every day.

They’ve since lowered those numbers, but the scale of these interventions dwarfs any of the Fed’s actions post-2008. A $50 billion buying spree roughly represents as much Fed support of mortgage markets in one day as was done across a month at the peak of the last round of Quantitative Easing. Taken in conjunction with the CARES Act, the Fed and the Treasury were now positioned to become a major ongoing buyer of everything from mortgages to U.S. government debt to exchange-traded funds  to corporate bonds to money-market funds.

While all of this was being negotiated, the public was led to believe that, unlike in 2008, this time we weren't going to let them steal all the money. This time there would be real oversight.

A $500 billion corporate assistance program for distressed industries proposed in the $2 trillion Senate coronavirus stimulus bill will include an inspector general and oversight committee, according to a senior administration official.

The inspector general for what Democrats initially bashed as a corporate “slush fund” will be confirmed by the Senate, just like any inspector general, according to the official.

But later we found out that, no, actually the Treasury Secretary has authority to overrule whatever the  committee might decree. Oh and Trump has already fired the Inspector General so then so much for that.  Meanwhile, an underfunded SBA loan program ostensibly meant to help small businesses cover payroll was immediately looted by hedge funds. 

The SBA debacle was so bad that it actually shamed Republicans back to the table one more time to try and fix it. This could have been a bonus leverage opportunity for Democrats to win critical funding for state and local governments whose budgets have been cratered by the crisis. Of course, they whiffed on that and now every state and every city in the country has to wait another month to find out if we're all facing severe austerity cuts on top of the economic disaster that is already unfolding.

In New Orleans, for example, the mayor and CAO will be before City Council on Tuesday with a plan to borrow $100 million in order to fill a massive budget gap. (There is a federal program designed specifically to help them do that. You can read about it here.) The deficit is projected to be as much as $150 million, though, so they're going to have to find more.  Hey I wonder who might have hundreds of millions of dollars in public money just laying around right now....actually, let's come back to that later.  For now, it's still up to Congress. The May stimulus might be their last chance to try bailing out the people instead of the one percent.  We'll see how they do. Seems like a tall order.


Shouldn't these say, "Go Home?"

Eventually they're just going to make everyone go back to work. The Brennans will send a six foot rabbit to force us there at the point of a sword. Those of us there are even jobs for, that is. Those of us that can be used under whatever temporary and tenuous conditions that are set down. It will happen before anyone is safe from the virus. If there is no further action from congress and the status quo order is already maintained, everything will still be as broken as it is now and we will all be several orders of magnitude poorer for it.  Poorer workers are cheaper workers. When unemployment is high they are more disposable. The conditions that force them to work despite the danger make them easily exploitable. The bosses have won the pandemic.

They understand this, of course. This is why they're so eager to "reopen the economy now."  Which, in turn, is why the momentum for doing that has been spurred by a national astroturf "protest" movement funded by the DeVos and Koch political networks. Two weeks ago, about 17 people showed up at the Governor's mansion. Having gained the blessing of elected Republican state legislators, the latest demonstration brought out 250 people in Baton Rouge on Saturday. 

The protest was put together in the five days since Edwards extended his stay-at-home directives Monday, said state Rep. Danny McCormick, R-Oil City, who organized the effort on social media and by contacting churches and other groups.

When the Governor extended the statewide "stay-at-home" order to May 15 he put it in line with the date the city currently has in place.  It remains to be seen whether the state or the city will be ready to "reopen" at that time or what such a thing will even look like. But the political winds seem to be blowing them in that direction.

State and local governments have been chasing White House issued "metrics" intended to gauge the rate of spread and its effect on health care resources. But no one really knows if or when it will be safe to relax the restrictions that get us to meet those numbers. The whole thing could start right back up.

 “So, what happens when we reopen,” mused Dr. Susan Hassig, associate professor of epidemiology at the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.  “It’s probably going to explode with a second wave.  The virus is still active, as we still see new cases, if even to a lesser degree.”

To mitigate the potential harm from reopening, every scientist The Lens spoke with re-emphasized that now more than ever is the time to take this virus seriously.  Both infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists alike said that washing one’s hands, wearing a mask and social distancing will go a long way to curb whatever second wave may just be around the corner.

“With a reopening comes a lack of social distancing, and it’s still not mandatory in Louisiana to wear a mask,” Hassig said. “Maybe 40% of people in New Orleans have already been infected. But, who knows?  Until we have the ability to rapidly test people and find out whether they’ve been exposed, it’s a guessing game.  I tell people to be cautious.  People want to take their chances, but it may be foolhardy. Just because we’re currently not running out of hospital beds doesn’t mean it’s time to let down our guard.”

There are still many people who believe this won’t be truly over until and if we can produce a vaccine that generates universal immunity

No one can say for certain when a vaccine like that might be ready.  But the consensus opinion tends toward 18 months at the very least but probably longer than that. So it's entirely reasonable to expect that over the next year and a half we'll be functioning under some sort of social distancing directive punctuated by future stay home orders from time to time if things spike.  Which is why the mayor said Tuesday that we may have to think about canceling Mardi Gras parades next year.

You can get mad at the mayor for saying these things out loud if you want to. But she's not just making it up. We need to talk honestly about the scale and scope of this thing so we can plan to keep everyone safe and secure throughout the....

Ahh who am I kidding? You know they're just going to bring on a bunch of politically connected business people to tell them what to do, right?  Said business people are already drawing up the orders, in fact.

Michael Hecht, president and CEO of GNO Inc., said that while health care considerations are paramount, it's time to start focusing on limiting damage to the economy.

"There is a general sense of urgency, from small businesses to large, to get the wheels of the economy moving again," he said. "Slowly re-opening the economy has practical implications like jobs, but also psychological implications because it gives people hope that we’re trying to move back to some new normal."

Moving too slowly to resuscitate the economy could prolong the recovery, which could lead to other health concerns that stem from joblessness and poverty, Hecht argues.

Hecht is echoing sentiments expressed in a full page ad placed by area patricians in the Advocate last week.  In this Washington Post interview, the mayor reiterates her response to that ad saying she "will not be bullied" by these business leaders. We hope that remains true. But the bosses have a lot of power. In fact, they probably have more power than the mayor does.

Friday, Cantrell talked to the press about developing a phased reopening strategy. Among the persons and entities listed on her advisory committee, we find businesses and "philanthropists" but not much about workers' voices.

It is unclear yet which businesses fall under the risk categories, but it will be determined in upcoming weeks by a multi-disciplinary, 14-member panel that includes (besides Cantrell): Tanya Blunt-Haynes of Friends Salon & Spa; Susan Brennan of Second Line Stages; Mavis Early of Greater New Orleans Hotel & Lodging Association; Joe Exnicios of Hancock Whitney Bank; Vaughn Fauria of NewCorp; Michael Fitts ofTulane University; Trivia Frazier of Obatala Sciences; Andy Kopplin of Greater New Orleans Foundation; Calvin Mackie of STEM NOLA; Alden J. McDonald Jr. of Liberty Bank and Trust; Rick Tallant of Shell Oil; Warner Thomas of Ochsner Health System; and Greg Tillery of We Dat’s Chicken & Shrimp.

This is similar to the infamous post-Katrina "Bring Back New Orleans Commission" Ironically Cantrell began her career in politics resisting that panel's plan to replace much of her neighborhood with green space. Now it looks like she's working for them. It's just an inescapable truth that the city we "rebuild" in the wake of any disaster will be shaped according to the whims of the bosses. The office holder they use to implement their agenda is really kind of irrelevant. It could be anybody... so long as they are careful not to get too out of line.

Of course the mayor's council of bosses isn't the only such panel plotting out an economic reopening. The Governor's Resilient Louisiana Commission held its initial meeting, over the phone of course, on April 22nd.  And the extremely right wing Legislature we just elected also has a task force. What are they like?

The task force is charged with developing comprehensive policy, legislative, and regulatory recommendations to immediately re-start the Louisiana economy and to invest in the long-term recovery of households, workers, and businesses, according to the press release.

“With every challenge, there is opportunity,” said chairman Jason DeCuir, a Baton Rouge-based tax expert. ”It’s a long road ahead, and gathering input to develop solutions is a critical first step.”

The task force's membership skews heavily towards white Republican males.

Hmmm.. I might check again to make sure there aren't any large pink rabbits there just in case. Anyway, what are you going to do when this is all over? You may not have your plans in place yet but rest assured, someone is working out a plan for you.  Right now it only feels like we've lost a month.  But just wait. We're sure to lose much more than that.

Oh no where did all our teachers go?

We used to have thousands of experienced, home grown, professional unionized teachers here in New Orleans. And now we need to spend $7 million recruiting to fill a shortage. What happened?

However, following Hurricane Katrina, the city's school system morphed into a decentralized system of scores of largely autonomous charter schools, overseen partly by the Orleans Parish School Board and partly by the state-run Recovery School District. Over time, all schools were converted to charters, and the local school district regained oversight over all schools only last year.

Meanwhile, teacher hiring became trickier, as the 38 separate nonprofit organizations that operate the city's charter schools gained control over hiring, without the benefit of a single, centralized office to provide talent.

LOL the system spontaneously "morphed." I hate when that happens. 

There's always more to the story

Headline says, "OMG the driver was denied a permit!"  And, admittedly, that is a problem. But it's a very large and convoluted citywide problem involving the charter school system, the legal environment under which bus companies operate in Louisiana, and several other things. The top of this Lens article covers some of it if you are looking for a quick mode of entry.

Anyway back to this un-permitted driver today.  Why was he denied a permit?

City spokesman Beau Tidwell confirmed the Hammond’s Transportation bus was driven by Chad Rodney, who had applied for a city school bus permit on Sept. 24 and was denied because he had a 2016 conviction for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute. By state law, school bus drivers can’t operate within five years of such a conviction, Tidwell said.

Is that a valid reason, though? Weren't we trying to end this kind of employment discrimination against ex-offenders? I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess the bus didn't crash because the driver was busy selling coke at that particular moment today. 

Some questions about these school property sales

The administrators of what used be a public school system in New Orleans unveiled a new facilities plan this week. A big part of that plan involves leaving the system fewer facilities to manage. As most of us know, New Orleans's schools were quasi-privatized after Katrina. That process culminated this year leaving all 78 schools currently operating under the control of charter organizations.  But the system owns more property than that.  There are 26 properties belonging to the school system that are unused and which sit in various states of disrepair. In fact, some of them are now just empty lots where schools used to be.  The plan right now is to sell 12 of them off.  There's a specific order of operations they have to follow for that to happen, though.

To divest itself of unused properties, the OPSB first has to vote to put them on the surplus list, a legal designation. Then the buildings or lots are offered to charter school operators and next to other government agencies for possible property trades. If no charter or agency wants a property, it can be sold through public auction.

We've seen an example of OPSB trading properties with other agencies just this year.  The school board approved a swap that turns the McDonogh 7 building over to HANO to be redeveloped as affordable housing.  Or at least it would do that if the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association loses (or drops) its lawsuit. For its story about the School Board plans, the Advocate obtains and rather credulously presents a quote from the neighborhood association's spokesperson. 

"The (association) is primarily concerned over losing a landmark building that has served as a school to its neighborhood and children for over 140 years," said Zepletal, president of the Touro-Bouligny Neighborhood Association. The group is also worried the building will become "vacant, blighted, and a victim of demolition by neglect, given the current lack of development plans (for it) by HANO," she said.

That's not really what they're worried about, though.  What they actually want is to keep anyone from building any affordable housing near them. That's what they told HANO board members over the summer, anyway. 

In its May suit, the neighborhood group argued that the land ought to remain a school and criticized the OPSB for not giving other charter school operators more time to decide if they want McDonogh No. 7 before offering it to HANO.

(HANO Board VP Lisa) Wheeler also highlighted a swell of neighborhood opposition to HANO’s separate plan to redevelop vacant land as affordable housing in Bywater, another neighborhood with high property values.

“The people in Bywater and in Uptown... are not going to sit idly by, when they say they don’t want to (see something turned into affordable) housing,” Wheeler said. “I would rather see us have housing that’s not necessarily Uptown, but still have housing.”

We saw those sentiments borne out again during the October 12th election where there was a housing question on the ballot in the form of Amendment 4.  This was the measure that would have granted the city special powers to create tax breaks for landlords and developers under the assumption that these would become incentives for the creation of "affordable housing."  It was a constitutional amendment so it needed to pass statewide. It did not.  But it passed in Orleans Parish by a wide margin.

Last week, we expressed our own quibbles with the amendment so we don't doubt that some of the "NO" vote came from people who, like us, favor affordable housing but didn't trust that specific policy approach to achieving it. But that kind of nuanced NO is probably an insignificant minority. Given the media (and the mayor and her PAC) tended to frame the message, by and large, it is safe to assume most voters looked at this measure as more of a simple, "Do you like affordable housing, Yes or No?"

Which is why, when we look at The Lens's map of the results we can see which precincts in Orleans Parish favor more affordable housing and which do not.   Predictably, those who do not are clustered in Lakeview and in the deepest parts of Uptown near Audubon Place.  But take a look, specifically, at these little slivers of NO in orange. Those are precincts 12-6 and 12-8. Right in the heart of Touro-Bouligny around where McDonogh 7 is located.

It's possible the school system could trade more properties to HANO.  But seeing as how that can be controversial, they're more likely to try and shoot on through to auctioning them off. In which case, we should look at this map provided by NOLA.com to guess which properties Sidney Torres might snap up at a discount.

Aside from the land speculation, here are a few other questions regarding this plan to consider.

Reading yesterday's NOLA.com story, we learn from Ken Ducote that selling off properties saves on maintenance and insurance and therefore "makes fiscal sense."

While the district's plan may be unpopular with some residents, it largely makes sense to Ken Ducote, executive director of the Greater New Orleans Collaborative of Charter Schools. Ducote, who oversaw school properties for the district for more than 20 years, said that to keep a building properly maintained, the district must spend an average of 2.5 percent of its value each year. So selling some properties makes fiscal sense.

"When you eliminate property that you don’t need, then you save the operations cost, insurance cost, security and so on," he said. The district estimates it costs $350,000 per year for minimal maintenance on the 12 properties it wants to sell.

Later in the article we are reminded that prior to Katrina, school buildings in New Orleans were, to say the least, not very well maintained. We are also told that, in most cases nowadays, maintenance and insurance costs for schools in operation fall on the charter organizations. How well do charters maintain their facilities anyway? Because most of these buildings were recently repaired with federal recovery funds, it's not appropriate to credit charter operators for their current condition. Over the long haul will they be better stewards of these properties than a properly funded and managed OPSB?

We also learn from this article that the district has a facilities fund to help handle some of these costs but it turns out they're already raiding it.

Realizing this, the Legislature created the School Facility Preservation Program in 2014 to dedicate annual tax money for repairs to New Orleans school buildings. It generates an estimated $35 million a year. But Lewis removed $10 million from the fund last year, with the Legislature's approval, to pay for instructional needs, a move Ducote criticized.

The planned sale of a dozen properties would help supplement funds available for facility needs by paying for future construction, without restrictions that limit the preservation program.

Uh oh. That sounds a lot like a plan to cover recurring costs with "one-time money" raised by selling off assets. For a while, Bobby Jindal was able to cover up the damage he was doing to the state budget by engaging in similar practices.  We've just spent the entire John Bel Edwards administration dealing with the consequences of that. Is this sell-off a budgetary stop gap? And if so, will there be more?

Finally, we are told the 12 properties about to be dumped are too small to meet the needs of "modern schools."  Here is how the plan defines that.

To decide which buildings to keep and which to get rid of, the district created guidelines that said sites smaller than 3.5 acres generally are inadequate for modern schools, which ideally include areas for green space, physical education, the performing arts, and students' drop-off and pickup.

Of the properties for sale, only the 3.4 acre vacant lot that used to be the Lafon School in Central City comes close to qualifying.  But it does raise another question about the schools that continue in operation.  Do they all currently offer the arts and phys ed programs the plan demands space for? "Ideally," they should, right?

Anyway, the board approved the facilities plan at its meeting last night.  The Lens has that story along with a link to the plan itself here. Keep an eye on what happens to these properties next.