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Massive expansion of charter schools pushed out all the teachers the children needed most!... New Orleans' 'miracle' is really a story of racism and hypocrisy

Jean Schwab - September 06, 2014

It's been a full nine years since the world was shocked as the most powerful hurricane ever to hit the Gulf Coast of the United States created a terrifying disaster for much of the region and especially dangerous times for New Orleans. But the realities of Katrina and New Orleans are also to this day the subject of a struggle over the history of what happened after the hurricane, when most of the people of New Orleans had been evacuated and America's rulers decided to utilize the disaster as an opportunity to create a private school system in the place of the public schools that had once served the city.

Dr. Raynard Sanders. Substance photo by Jean Schwab.Dr. Raynard Sanders talked with Substance during the first week of the 2014 - 2015 school year, nearly a decade after Hurricane Katrina had devastated the city of New Orleans and Arne Duncan, among others, saw the disaster that killed hundreds of people as an opportunity to expand corporate school reform. Substance had earlier published a story by Dr. Sanders in August 2011, after we met him during the SOS convention and march in Washington, D.C. He has continued insisting on reporting the truth about New Orleans since, and we spent some time with him to update his earlier reports.

As the ninth school year since Katrina hit New Orleans begins, there is a major attempt by the enemies of public education to depict what was done to the New Orleans public schools as a triumph of market based school choice, rather than the racist attack on democracy that it was. One of the most dramatic apologies for the conservative attack on democracy in New Orleans is unfolding this school year in the form of a series on NPR that attempts to whitewash the New Orleans school situation. "Today, the New Orleans school system is unlike any other anywhere in the U.S." NPR began by saying. "More than 9 in 10 students this fall are attending charter schools run by dozens of private, nonprofit organizations. Families choose the schools their children will attend, and the neighborhood school is a thing of the past..."

Most people in New Orleans disagree with the whitewash. The following is what Substance heard from Raynard Sanders.

Katrina was a watershed event and a watershed event in the fact that there were numerous efforts to try to take control of public education away from the local elected board; Katrina offered them a perfect opportunity to do that.

There were several things that happened that caused it to be a perfect situation.

First, Katrina damaged 80% of the city and most all of the legislation passed to take over the schools by the state was done when the city was depopulated, so no one in the city to resist it.

Secondly, there was great interest nationally to begin to create a charter school model in New Orleans at the same time. Those efforts were funded by the usual suspects -- the Gates, Broad, and Walton foundations. Once New Orleans evacuated and they saw this opportunity. They immediately contacted state officials while the people were still out and the city was still under water.

Hurricane Katrina on August 28, 20015, as it was making landfall at New Orleans.On Sept 7, 2005, the reactionary Heritage Foundation met and set the agenda of what New Orleans was supposed to look like. One of the many things they said -- and the administration of then President George W. Bush followed -- was to create private schools similar to charter schools, replacing the public schools. This was in addition to getting rid of public housing and many other services that served the poor and working class. So they set that agenda in about nine days, and Bush followed that agenda.

At the same time, the so-called "philanthropic community" (that is pro-choice and pro-privatization) immediately began to pump monies into entities, some of which were not created yet, to facilitate the very quick advancement of charter schools; the federal government $40 million just for charter schools.

2005-2006 Cecil Picard, State Superintendent of Education orchestrated to take over New Orleans Schools. He tried to remove the present Superintendent of New Orleans Schools, an African American woman and replace her with a corporate white person, Bill Roberti CEO of Alvarez and Marsal Corporation. All the New Orleans School Board were called and encouraged to remove the present school superintendent. At the hearing Picard couldn�t get enough votes so he was unable to replace the Superintendent. Picard�s reaction was to threaten the School Board by telling them that he �would do it anyway.� He then offered legislation that took over 107 schools buildings out of 121 buildings. This was illegal because the state of Louisiana had a takeover policy that in-order to take over a school had to have a school performance score of less than 60% for four consecutive years with no improvement. ACT 35 was crafted only to fit New Orleans. It was a onetime condition. It raised the cut off score from 60% to 87.4% only in New Orleans. They then took over the schools.

After Katrina, Cecil Picard refused to release funds for the cleanup of schools in New Orleans but he did release funds in neighboring Parishes. He started lobbying and got others to call to get rid of the elected New Orleans School Board of Education. Meanwhile he is expanding his relationship with Charter Schools. Governor Kathleen Blanco began to waive all requirements for starting Charter Schools. Before Katrina, we had three charter schools that had to have policies waived so that all the safe guards and regulations that had been in place were removed so now anyone could start a charter schools because there were no background checks or safe guards in place. In an article entitled New Orleans Reformed Public School System: National Model? Backstreet College of Education, Dr. Sanders explains how local and state education officials decided, without public input, to convert all public schools in New Orleans into charter schools. Sanders stated in the article that �In November 2005, the Louisiana Department of Education successfully lobbied the state legislature to pass ACT 35, shrewdly crafted for schools just in New Orleans, which allowed it to take over 107 schools. In this legislation these 107 schools were identified as failing, despite the fact that many of them received awards for academic progress from the state department of Education in May, 2005.�

�In the article Dr. Sanders explains the 5 tier system and how it changed after Katrina: The University of Minnesota Law School�s Institute on Race and Poverty (2010) found that rebuilding of the public school system post-Katrina New Orleans produced a five �tier� system in the public schools in which not every student in the city receives the same quality education. This �tiered� system sorts white students and a small share of students of color into selective schools while steering the majority of low income students of color to high poverty non-charter schools�

All schools were taken over by the state run by the Recovery School District (RSD).The RSD named Robin Jarvis, a former principal of a primary school, Superintendent of RSD. She began to plan what she was going to do. RSD announced that they were not going to open schools this year. They were not going to hire any teachers. This left hundreds of kids roaming the streets. Because 107 schools were taken over, that left 14 schools in each parish. All these parishes opened 3-4 schools. All of these schools were for the gifted or students that scored above average on state mandated tests and these schools became charter schools. The schools were not opened for six months.

February, RSD opened three schools and that was a wreck, There was chaos-no books, water fountains not working and more security people than teachers and staff. School ended in June. More students were returning and more schools were needed. No new teachers were hired in June 2006. They were so unprepared that they were forced to delay the opening of the schools until late 2006, not on time. This was a disaster, no materials or teachers.

The problem was that there were no policies that gave Superintendent Jarvis any authority to do anything- even purchase anything over $500. One school needed a water fountain but that couldn�t be purchased because they had no money. Jarvis became discouraged and resigned.

Paul Vallas comes in with: He�s the man to straighten everything out. He begins to accelerate the opening of the charter schools and the Fake community engagement which were lies and the community believed they were contributing to all the decisions concerning schools. Paul Vallas met with community leaders, who believed him, and then he let them die.

Charter Schools are not accountable for retention of students. There was a class action suit for special education students. Students are supposed to be provided with transportation to and from school but the school actually didn�t do that. They will pay for parents who drop off students. Schools were supposed to provide counselors and social workers but they didn�t. On the other hand Principals get paid as much as $200,000 for schools with 200-400 children. The suit won but is now in appeal.

A Director of Operations may be paid $270,000. Charter management charges a management fee of 18%. All this has produced a system of 69%-70% of the schools rated as D or F.

Now that the Charters had finally gotten money, could hire who they wanted, could choose the students they wanted and enjoyed unlimited authority. Even with all this there was not an increase in equity. This became an access challenge for poor and minority students.

There were no neighborhood schools left, so busing created a huge cost. We had five year olds standing on the corner at 4-5 in the morning waiting for the school bus. This ride could be up to 1 � hours to school. So the five year old will spend 3 hours a day going to school and back. Kindergarten students spent as much as 12 hours a day at school. So transportation costs went up after Katrina. Pre-Katrina costs for 120 schools were less than $10 million. Today RSD has 70 schools and transportation costs are $35 million a year. Another example of increase in cost: in Pre-Katrina 120 schools costs for security guards was $9 million. In 2006-7 security guard costs for 13 schools was $13 million. That added up to $2,000 per student spent on security.

Another interesting fact is that under RSD the expulsion rate is10X the national rate.

So are New Orleans student preforming better on state mandated tests? According to Dr. Sanders article New Orleans Reformed School System: National Model? �Six years after the hurricane several external researchers cited the state run schools in New Orleans as one of the academically performing districts in Louisiana. In one study, Michael Deshotels found that the high poverty schools in New Orleans scored lower on state mandated tests than the high poverty schools in numerous districts across Louisiana. These other districts were not part of the educational reform model nor did they receive billions of dollars given to the state run school district of New Orleans. �

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