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?
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