School & District Management

Crescent Wrench

New Orleans desperately wants to reopen its schools. The question is, how?
By Catherine Gewertz, Erik W. Robelen & Michelle R. Davis — November 11, 2005 2 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

As schools in the suburbs begin to reopen, New Orleans’ own system remains in limbo. For years, the Crescent City’s district has been immensely troubled—both academically and managerially—and the devastation wrought by Katrina has led everyone from community leaders to U.S. congressmen to consider starting with a clean slate. “We’re not going to rebuild a failing system,” Louisiana superintendent of education Cecil Picard told Education Week, Teacher Magazine’s sister publication, in an e-mail. But change doesn’t come easily—or without controversy.

See Also

Return to the main story,

Picking Up the Pieces

In fact, plans to reopen the first 13 city schools were temporarily halted in mid-October by a district court judge, who called the school board’s hastily arranged vote to establish them as charters “a disguised back-door attempt to push through a pre-hurricane agenda.” School officials acknowledged that charters were under consideration for the city’s Algiers neighborhood long before Katrina struck. And the community group proposing them received support not only from city officials but also from their counterparts at the state level. The day of the vote, Louisiana’s governor, Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, signed an executive order waiving key portions of the state’s charter law, including a requirement that the conversion of a school be approved by faculty and parents. The charter application was also designed to take advantage of a $20.9 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education.

But the proposed charters would be exempt from all district regulations, including those governing staffing, which prompted concern from the city’s American Federation of Teachers affiliate. Some charter advocates on the national level are also wary: Jeanne Allen, president of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Education Reform, believes the city’s proposal lacks a larger framework to guide and support it.

Even after schools reopen in New Orleans, Katrina’s educational aftershocks will still be felt nationwide. Only a fraction of the city’s 60,000 students are expected to return this year, meaning that schools elsewhere will have to educate them—an opportunity, some believe, to demonstrate how school choice might work. Modeled on the education relief package proposed by President Bush, the $1.9 billion Hurricane Education Assistance Act introduced in Congress in early October would provide the host public schools as much as $7,500 for each displaced student. But the bill—still being debated at press time—also calls for $488 million for parents who want to send their children to secular or religious private schools, with the same $7,500 limit.

Federal education officials insist the payments would be one-time benefits, not vouchers. But according to Paul Houston, executive director of the American Association of School Administrators, they’re more indicative of politics than constructive change. “The [Bush] administration,” he says, “is seeing an opportunity to put in an ideological proposal.”

A version of this article appeared in the November 01, 2005 edition of Teacher Magazine as Crescent Wrench

Events

Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and other jobs in K-12 education at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
Ed-Tech Policy Webinar Artificial Intelligence in Practice: Building a Roadmap for AI Use in Schools
AI in education: game-changer or classroom chaos? Join our webinar & learn how to navigate this evolving tech responsibly.
Education Webinar Developing and Executing Impactful Research Campaigns to Fuel Your Ed Marketing Strategy 
Develop impactful research campaigns to fuel your marketing. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K-12 districts.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

School & District Management Opinion A Good Principal Knows When It's Time to Leave
I didn’t leave my job because of burnout; I stepped away from being a school leader because it was in everybody’s best interest.
Matthew Ebert
4 min read
Conceptual illustration of someone handing off a baton to someone else over a completed puzzle.
Vanessa Solis/Education Week via Canva
School & District Management Principals Tell Politicians on Capitol Hill: We’re Burning Out
Students' mental health top principals' growing list of concerns.
6 min read
People walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington, June 9, 2022.
Visitors walk outside the U.S Capitol building in Washington on June 9, 2022.
Patrick Semansky/AP
School & District Management Women Superintendents Experience Bias on the Climb to Leadership
Interpersonal slights and inequities make it hard for women to land the job and stay in it.
3 min read
Woman stands in front of a staircase in different colors. She is about to walk up the stairs. Concept of standing in front of a challenge and finding the right solution and courage to move on.
mikkelwilliam/E+
School & District Management Fewer of Today's Superintendents Are at Retirement Age
A new survey of superintendents adds to what we know about the people who lead the nation's school districts.
4 min read
Conceptual illustration of money, salaries and data.
iStock/Getty