New Orleans Schools Charter a New Course

NEW ORLEANS —  Long before Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the city’s public schools were a disaster.

For decades, New Orleans students, most of them poor and African American, posted dismal results in classrooms run by badly trained teachers. Inept and corrupt education officials nearly bankrupted the district and left old, neglected campuses to fall apart.

In a country with many struggling urban school systems, New Orleans was widely considered the worst.

So, it is little surprise that, as the city spent the nine months since Katrina trying to reassemble itself, no one clamored to recast schools in the old mold. Instead, many educators, parents and students say, Katrina offered the Crescent City a perverse gift: The chance to start from scratch.

“Shame on us if we don’t take advantage of this,” said Leslie Jacobs, a member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and a former member of the Orleans Parish School Board that oversaw the city’s campuses.

“It was a district that was warehousing students -- absolutely warehousing them. We were morally, academically and financially bankrupt.... Katrina has given us the opportunity to fix that.”

State education officials are leading the ambitious reform effort. Seizing on the opening Katrina provided, the state took control of nearly all of New Orleans’ campuses and plans to hand over many to charter-school operators.

The idea excites many who believe that publicly funded and independently run charter schools are a way to infuse innovation and choice into a long-stagnant system. But it has also raised concerns that inexperienced charter groups will be unprepared for the rigors of running a school.

With the number of students returning to New Orleans picking up dramatically, educators are scrambling to keep pace and open schools in a still-devastated city.

Katrina nearly erased the New Orleans public school system. It scattered the district’s 4,000 teachers, gutting a potent union influence.

Flood waters damaged about 30 of the city’s roughly 125 campuses beyond repair. Blocks away from a levee breach in the city’s Lower 9th Ward, for example, Joseph Hardin Elementary sits amid an abandoned neighborhood of crumpled homes and rusting car frames. Classrooms once filled with the school’s 650 students are a dark, moldy mess, with swaths of insulation hanging from collapsed ceilings, tables upturned and books scattered on the floor.

Few of the city’s schools escaped unscathed, with most suffering some damage or looting.

Since December, 25 traditional and charter schools have opened, and about 12,000 of the city’s roughly 60,000 students returned and enrolled. Demographers project that by fall that number will double and by January could reach as high as 34,000.

Saddled with the task of finding space for most of those students is Robin Jarvis, the acting superintendent of the schools taken over by the state.

Jarvis faces a balancing act as she tries to determine where to reopen schools. It’s impossible to predict precisely where families will return, and large sections of New Orleans remain so badly damaged that rebuilding campuses is not yet feasible.

“Right now, it’s still triage,” she said. “It’s not as simple as, ‘If you build the schools, the students will come back.’ ”

The state opened three schools in recent months, and construction crews are working to prepare 12 to 15 more campuses.

To staff the classrooms, Jarvis’ team will hire about 510 teachers to join the 92 already on board. Teachers and principals who worked in the old system must reapply for jobs -- a process that includes rigorous evaluations and interviews.

Having to fight to get her old job back as the head of Benjamin Banneker Elementary was humbling for Cheryllyn Branche. She served as principal for three years before Katrina destroyed her home and forced her to flee to Baton Rouge.

“But the opportunity to come back to this place and help -- I had to do it,” she said.

Banneker, like New Orleans public schools as a whole, serves primarily poor, African American students. The wealthier white families who live in upscale homes on the tree-lined streets surrounding the campus typically enroll their children in private schools, Branche said.

Only subtle reminders of Katrina remain at the school: Empty aquariums have yet to be restocked, and the doors are new -- the old ones were removed by looters.

Under state control, Branche and teachers said, Banneker has improved. Branche now has the power to hire and fire her teachers -- a critical shift. Before Katrina, the central administration often forced unwanted teachers on principals, and a contract with the teachers union gave preference based on seniority.

“We have been clear with the union that we are not going to do collective bargaining,” Jarvis said. “There were things in the contract that took care of teachers but that were sometimes not good for the children.”

Steve Monaghan, president of the Louisiana Federation of Teachers, said the union was being used as a convenient scapegoat. “This union never had a stranglehold on the city as people would like to believe,” he said. “It was a group in desperate search of academic leadership for these kids in a corrupt system.”

Several teachers at Banneker said they were not concerned about the loss of union protection. Day-to-day improvements such as smaller class sizes and increased funds for a full-time counselor, social worker and French teacher are more important, they said.

Teachers and Branche also praised Jarvis’ team for remaining nimble in the face of a host of unknowns. Since Banneker reopened in mid-April, for example, the number of students has doubled to 280, forcing state officials and Branche to quickly add teachers and combine classes.

In an effort to make up for lost time, state officials have added an hour to the school day and are keeping schools open until June 30.

Teachers at Banneker shrugged off the additional demands.

“I think the kids need the time more than we do,” said history teacher Cecil Catolos. “Katrina has really made us think about things differently.”

Before the hurricane, a seven-member Orleans Parish School Board oversaw a district in free-fall. In spring 2005, 55% of fourth- graders and 74% of eighth- graders failed to score at the basic level on state English assessments. The results in math were similar. Critics recall with dark humor the recent valedictorian from one city high school who repeatedly failed the state exam students must pass to earn a diploma.

Over the last decade, 10 superintendents were hired and fired. Allegations of corruption and fraud were so rampant that the FBI and other federal authorities set up a field office in the district’s central administration building, which resulted in two dozen indictments. After auditors concluded that $71 million in federal funds could not be accounted for, state and federal officials forced the Orleans board to let a private firm to take control of district finances.

In Katrina, however, state educators saw the opportunity for even more sweeping reform. Legislators passed a special law permitting state officials to take over any New Orleans school that was performing below the state average on assessments. One hundred and seven of the city’s roughly 126 schools fell immediately under state control.

Failures of the past still must be dealt with. Because the school system underinsured its property far below federal requirements, FEMA is expected to reduce its funding by $170 million. In addition, the district is burdened with nearly $300 million in debt run up before Katrina.

Charter schools are expected to claim a prominent place in the new education landscape. Desperate to open schools after Katrina, former principals, community groups and universities petitioned state officials and the city school board for the charters, which offer broad autonomy over hiring and curriculum.

The city school board has issued charters for 15 of the 19 campuses it still controls. Jarvis expects at least 17 state-approved charters to be open by fall.

Before the storm, the city had approved only one charter, which had not yet opened.

The first schools to open in December were a group of six charters in the Algiers section of the city. Parents and students at O. Perry Walker High School, which had been plagued by violence and poor academics before Katrina, said the new staff was running a more secure school with higher expectations.

“It’s been different,” said 18-year-old Prince Kaywood, holding his cap and gown for his graduation ceremony. “I feel safer, and the teachers demand more of us. They pushed us to do our work.”

At graduation Wednesday night, Toinette Trotter, whose son, James, received a diploma, expressed thanks that Walker opened as quickly as it did.

“I didn’t know what the future would hold. I am shocked this has worked out the way it did,” Trotter said. “My son has kept telling me that he was learning more. I’ve been relieved.”

Charter advocates and critics agree it is too soon to tell whether charters will improve student performance. But in an effort to screen groups unprepared to handle the demands of a charter school, state officials have hired a national charter organization to review applications. Of 44 proposals for next year, the state approved six.

That frustrates Brian Riedlinger, academic chief of the Algiers Charter School Assn., which runs the six schools and has applied to the state to open six more. With so many students returning to New Orleans, Riedlinger thinks the state should focus on the immediate needs -- opening doors to those children.

“The state has told us that we don’t have a philosophy of education. I told them, ‘You’re right.’ We haven’t had the time to sit around and theorize. We’re trying to get schools open.”