Radical Changes Await New Orleans Schools
The scheduled re-opening of New Orleans public schools, slated for Monday, has been cancelled as the state government, the school district, and private interests squabble over the future of the troubled school district.
ROBERT SIEGEL, host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Robert Siegel.
For weeks, New Orleans school officials have been promising that they were ready to open a handful of public schools this coming Monday. But come Monday, not a single school will open, in part, because dozens of groups have moved to break the system apart. NPR's Claudio Sanchez has the story.
CLAUDIO SANCHEZ reporting:
The breakup of the New Orleans public school system has been fast and furious. Three weeks ago Ora Watson, the interim school superintendent, announced that four schools would be ready to open in the west bank Algiers section of the city. But at a meeting in Algiers last night, Lourdes Moran, the vice president of the New Orleans Parish School Board, made clear that that plan had been scrapped.
Ms. LOURDES MORAN (Vice President, New Orleans Parish School Board): My name is Lourdes Moran, as everyone knows, and the purpose of these forums is to maintain open dialogue.
SANCHEZ: The old system was a system of haves and have-nots, Moran said. The new system will be the first of its kind in the nation, made up almost entirely of charter schools, independently run by universities, private and non-profit groups, all working to support children, not a bureaucracy, she said.
Ms. MORAN: I hope that we set a model for what a true charter school system can possibly be. The dream of our parents is we want our children to have better. So that is my dream. I want our communities' children to have better than what we had.
SANCHEZ: Moran pleaded with parents in the audience to come together to support an all-charter-school system. A handful of people, though, walked out, feeling angry and left out. Pearl Edmondson(ph) and Debra Brown(ph) are both New Orleans teachers with children in the system. They say the takeover of the city's schools has been conducted in secret and behind closed doors by people who say they're from Algiers but really aren't.
Unidentified Woman #1: The real people who are not here, who can't get back here because they don't have the finances to make it back here, they're disenfranchised. They don't have a say.
Unidentified Woman #2: These people all are from the east bank or different areas but they're not from Algiers.
SANCHEZ: Lourdes Moran says she's disappointed people feel that way.
Ms. MORAN: It's a terrible situation that we're in and I got beat up about the fact that our community is displaced and did not have a voice. So what I had to do is I had to move fast to do something innovative to bring them back, because right now what are they going to come to?
SANCHEZ: At a community meeting this morning, Moran confirmed that on December 14th eight public schools will open as charter schools. What happens to the other 118 schools in New Orleans is anybody's guess. Many may not have the students or the money to open at all. This week Governor Kathleen Blanco and the Louisiana Legislature cut 80 percent of the money that the state sends to the school systems in the three parishes hardest hit by Katrina, among them New Orleans. Claudio Sanchez, NPR News, New Orleans.
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