SPENO: 2019-2020

From school openings and closures to significant alterations of policies, curriculum, accountability, and oversight, K-12 education in New Orleans has been in a perennial state of evolution over the last 15 years. These changes can be difficult to track, so in this section, we offer a brief overview of the stories capturing headlines through the start of the 2019-20 school year. Our aim is to provide an archival overview of the key issues in public education that received attention from the local media. We recognize that there is a great deal happening in New Orleans public education that is not captured in these headlines, or in the local media landscape. However, we believe that acknowledging the stories that did capture public attention will help readers understand some of the contextual issues and personal stories making headlines in New Orleans this year

In a notable change for the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE), in January 2020, Superintendent John White announced that he would be leaving his position in March 2020. White had served in his role for eight years, working under two gubernatorial administrations, and leading many of the education reform initiatives in New Orleans. BESE will be tasked with finding his replacement.

In January 2019, the OPSB and NOLA-PS approved $9 million in funding over the next three years to be directed at some of the most critical areas of public education in the city. The funds will be used mainly to support teacher training and enhanced mental health and behavioral support services for students. The program is a result of 2019 state legislation to target districtwide improvements in the city’s schools overseen by NOLA-PS.

How schools serve special education students has been a focus for those involved in the city’s education system over the past decade. In 2015, the LDOE signed a consent decree with the federal government designed to improve the quality of services and education provided to students with special needs in New Orleans. According to the court monitor of the case, city schools have largely been compliant with that agreement and the LDOE has instituted monitoring of special education in select schools citywide.

Challenges do remain, however: in November 2019, NOLA-PS cited three schools for their under-service of special education students. Additionally, the independent monitors overseeing the special education federal consent decree recently criticized the state for making errors in selecting which schools were monitored for their work with special education students.

In 2019, NOLA-PS, in conjunction with YouthForce NOLA, a non-profit organization focused on improved career readiness for New Orleans high school students, became the first partnership in the state to gain approval for an extension academy pilot program. The program is a new initiative from the LDOE that is geared towards reducing student debt and assisting high school graduates in finding jobs. In the program, students embark on an alternative graduation model that allows them to stay in high school for a fifth year during which they can learn career skills and earn college credits.

New Orleans’ open enrollment policy allows students to attend almost any public school in the city, regardless of where they live. The main benefit of this policy is that students are not bound by geographic restrictions when attempting to find a school. But it does add logistical complexities for both schools and families in determining how to transport students to schools in a manner that is cost-effective, safe, and timely.

Each school or charter management organization (CMO) must coordinate bus routes and work with private contractors to offer transportation to students. Additionally, in early 2019, New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell signed an ordinance passed by the City Council that required all school buses, drivers, and aides to be permitted by the city’s Ground Transportation Bureau. In late 2019, a serious school bus crash put these issues into sharp focus and led to increased oversight and compliance monitoring by NOLA-PS. As of January 2019, 86% of buses in the city had passed inspections. Additionally, NOLA-PS has also launched a working group aimed at increasing quality and reducing costs for school transportation.

One of the central accountability tasks of NOLA-PS is to shut down failing or low-performing schools or to turn them over to other charter operators. Advocates for school closure argue that students should not attend failing schools and that charter schools that fail to meet performance or financial accountability measures must be held responsible or else the city’s approach to education will be ineffective. However, school closures can also be disruptive to families, students, educators, and alumni of schools with historical connections in the city.

In 2019, OPSB Superintendent Henderson Lewis decided to revoke the charter contracts of two schools at the end of the 2019-2020 school year: Mary D. Coghill Charter School and Joseph A. Craig Charter School. Despite some OPSB board members opposing the closures, there were insufficient votes to overturn Lewis’ decisions.4 However, neither school will be shut down: next year, the operators of Homer A. Plessy will operate Craig, while NOLA-PS will directly run Coghill

New Orleans, like many districts and states across the country, is facing a teacher shortage. There is no single cause of this shortage: a study by New Schools for New Orleans (NSNO) found that over a two-year period, 29% of the city’s teachers left their jobs due to a variety of reasons including low pay and a desire for more support from school administrators. For several years, NSNO has been leading a local effort, enhanced with federal funding, to address these shortages by increasing and improving teacher training programs for people of color at local universities and training providers. The federal grants supporting the training could run out this year. Earlier this year, to address the problem, the OPSB and NOLA-PS voted to approve a multi-million dollar, multi-year funding proposal to support ongoing teacher retention and recruitment efforts in a systemwide needs funding effort outlined earlier in this section.

In November 2019, the OPSB and NOLA-PS voted to keep property tax rates steady. Due to increasing property values in the city, this helped to ensure a boost to local funding for schools even as the total amount of state funding set to reach schools was set to decrease.