School Shuffle in New Orleans Launches Growing Charter Choices

By Maloney, Stephen

Paul Vallas says New Orleans educators have found a new religion.

Rather than devote all their energy to just one educational higher power, the Recovery School District superintendent said school leaders have developed a multifaceted educational belief structure in the three years since the state divided city public schools after Hurricane Katrina.

“We’ve become agnostic when it comes to who’s running the school,” Vallas said. “Our concern is that the school be a superior school. New Orleans has really become a diverse provider model for education.”

Before 2005, the Orleans Parish School Board oversaw all public schools in the city. But that century-old model effectively was shattered when the Louisiana Department of Education splintered the historically beleaguered district into the RSD and a smattering of charter schools.

The old structure of school governance is not likely to return to New Orleans since the charter movement has taken a firm hold, Vallas said.

“Half of our children are being educated in charter schools right now,” Vallas said. “In the next two to three years, most of our schools will be converted to either charters or charter-type schools.”

The RSD oversees 26 charter and 33 traditional schools, while the school board oversees seven traditional schools and 12 charters.

Nine of the board’s charters on the West Bank have banded together to form the Algiers Charter School Association.

This system of schools has replaced the pre-Katrina single school system that was prone to corruption and kickback schemes and has given students something Vallas said they never had before — a choice.

“Right now all of our schools are open enrollment and you can apply to virtually any school in the district,” he said. “All the schools are marketing themselves and competing for kids. Competition is good.”

Schools have to remain attractive to students to maintain enrollment, a situation Vallas said puts the needs of the children first.

Edna Karr Senior High School Principal John Hiser said he sees more positive competition between schools now than at any other point during his 38-year career as a public school educator in New Orleans.

Beyond refocusing on students, Hiser said teacher salaries have exploded in the past three years as schools struggle to attract the highest quality teaching staff.

First time teachers now make a starting salary of just over $39,000, which Hiser said is about $10,000 more than before the storm.

“The charter schools have a lot more access to the federal dollars that each student generates,” Hiser said. “We’re not having to send all of the money to the central office so it can be distributed. We’re able to bring the dollars directly to the students.”

This ability to cut out the funding middle man allows educators in the new system to directly address problems on a school-by- school basis whereas funding rarely ever got to the school level before the storm, Hiser said.

“Between illegality and incompetence, we didn’t have enough people minding the store before the storm,” he said.

Under the old system, Karr’s budget included only $40,000 in discretionary funding to pay for things such as replacement textbooks and emergency repairs. Hiser said he now has access to millions of dollars to address school needs from teacher salary to janitorial supplies.

Karr received a budget of $6.9 million for school expenditures for the 2007-08 school year, according to the ACSA.

“Now each school principal that is in a charter position is responsible for everything, be it mops, buckets, custodians, security, all of that comes out of this pile of money,” Hiser said. “Everything is in our charge.”

This added responsibility brings with it a chance to make an impact on each student’s educational career that was unknown before the storm, he said.

Credit: Stephen Maloney

(Copyright 2008 Dolan Media Newswires)

(c) 2008 New Orleans CityBusiness. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.