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.

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.

Think of the children... or the economy

The mayor and the superintendent are probably going to announce today that the schools aren't ready to open. At least they will tell us that's what the numbers say.  

The city has set benchmarks of fewer than 50 new cases per day and a sustained decline in new cases for 14 consecutive days before moving to new reopening phases, and Avegno said the district should also consider these for reopening schools.

She also said she wants positivity rates to remain below 5% of people tested.

An analysis of the city's health data shows that in recent days New Orleans has come nowhere near meeting most of those goals.

Case numbers have been rising since late June, shortly after Phase 2 was implemented. The last time Orleans Parish showed fewer than 50 new cases in a day was July 6.

There were nearly twice as many cases in the 14 days that ended Friday -- 1,129 -- than there were in the 14 days prior, when the city saw 583 cases. The percent of residents who test positive hovered between 5 and 7 this past week.

"No other country has reopened schools with the level of community transmission that today is happening in America," Avegno told school leaders on Wednesday.

What they end up actually doing is another matter. Probably they will say they're looking for the safest plan but still holding out hope the schools can open.  This isn't because they are indecisive so much as they are, like everyone else right now, waiting for better options.  Because, once again, thanks to the complete lack of support from the federal government the virus is out of control all over the country and cities and states are left to twist in the wind. And with little sign that any of that is going to change, our local decision-makers are at the mercy of political pressures born of public anxiety they should not have to confront right now. This is what they mean when they say the situation is "fluid."  It means we've all been left to drown.

But, hey, sometimes you just gotta take it.  You know, for The Economy.

School Board member Sarah Usdin said the health department will have to balance the economy and safety.

"I just feel like there’s no right answer," Usdin said. "This is such an incredibly hard, hard time for everyone. It's unprecedented and we want what’s best for everyone. And there’s no way to have what’s best for everyone."

"There's no way to have what's best for everyone."  Would love to hear Usdin elaborate on this.  Some people want safety but other people want to make money, is what it sounds like she is saying. Such a difficult choice! Can't imagine there being a "right answer" to that.

Update:  Really needed to append this Elizabeth Warren op-ed here because it provides a direct "right answer" to Usdin.

Those who frame the debate as one of health versus economics are missing the point. It is not possible to fix the economy without first containing the virus. We need a bold, ambitious legislative response that does four things: brings the virus under control; gets our schools, child care centers, businesses, and state and local governments the resources they need; addresses the burdens on communities of color; and supports struggling families who don’t know when the next paycheck will come.

Warren goes on to list a number of things that need to happen in the next federal relief bill, including direct aid to local school districts, so that we don't have to listen to false frames like the one Usdin presents us with.  Not counting on any of that coming to pass, of course. But it's important to make sure people know they're being denied solutions rather than simply tell them none exist.   

Getting all the kids infected so we can own the libs

Just in case the fast approaching benefits expiration and evictions cliff wasn't enough stress for everyone to handle at once, we've also got this.

The Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will consider “minimum health and safety standards” for reopening Louisiana schools — triggered by a new law — during a special meeting Tuesday.

The public got a glimpse of what those standards will look like — and which could be up for debate — when Louisiana Department of Education State Superintendent Cade Brumley and BESE President Sandy Holloway spoke before the House Committee on Education Monday. The standards, drafted as emergency replacement bulletins for traditional schools and charter schools, include limits on class size, bus capacity, social distancing and cleaning requirements and largely reflect guidelines previously released by the LDOE.

The "standards" are, like the rules under which everything else has been operating under these circumstances, deliberately loose. Because we really are all just making this up as we go along.

Face coverings — which are, for now, required in businesses and public buildings for anyone over the age of eight as part of an executive order effective Monday — are a point of major political contention in the state and around the country. BESE’s draft language stops short of a mask mandate. It appears to offer schools some flexibility, saying children older than eight and adults inside a school building “must wear a face covering to the greatest extent possible and practical within the local community context.”

All of which is completely understandable. Everyone really is trying to feel their way through this. It might be a bit easier to figure out what is "possible and practical within the local community context," if we hadn't designed such a convoluted context to begin with.

Until this point, local and state guidelines have been largely based on federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and have been packaged as suggestions, not mandates. Local Education Agencies, or LEAs, are in charge of their own plans. In New Orleans, most charter schools are considered their own LEAs and it’s been unclear what role the district might play in reviewing or authorizing any reopening plans.

The district did not respond to inquiries regarding whether it would be approving individual charter group plans.

The thing is, though, a virus doesn't care about any of this stuff.  So while it's fine for state agencies and charter boards to differentiate their "local contexts" and spheres of authority, ideally their plans for containing the virus should all be relatively uniform.  This is precisely the reason the governor has had to issue a statewide mask mandate.  Exceptions and discretion are going to come into play as a matter of course, but the baseline rules need to have some clarity. Devolving all the authority to individual school districts and charter boards is just inviting more chaos.

Keep in mind, also, inviting chaos may actually be the point.  At least from Betsy DeVos's perspective.

BASH: You're the Secretary of Education. So why do you not have guidance on what schools should do if there's a coronavirus outbreak just weeks before you want them to reopen?

DeVOS: There are really good examples that have been utilized in the private sector. pic.twitter.com/RBFxZ5OeFw

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 12, 2020

All the schools MUST OPEN...  and, you know, we're sure they will figure out how.  Why would they be so deliberately cruel and disruptive? The short answer is, screw you, that is why.

Every push to "reopen" anything right now, be it a school or a hotel or a fish tank, or whatever is a push by the bosses to blame the workers they subject to unsafe conditions for their own peril.  A bill John Bel just signed into law protects certain employers, including school districts from liability if their workers or the people they serve get sick.  The Trump administration is pushing for similar measures to go into the next round of  federal "relief" legislation.

What is your company or organization telling you right now about leave time? What are the mixed messages they are sending you about "safety" on the job vs. your obligation to show up and put yourself and others in danger? That kind of chaos is happening in every workplace forced by policy makers in Washington to "reopen" with minimal guidance or support. The goal of the policy, as always, is a more frightened and compliant labor pool.

And it is being implemented with little or no regard for your safety or the safety of your children.