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.