OPSB candidates asked to sign on to public schools platform
7th November 2016 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
Part of the “Forward New Orleans for Public Schools” coalition, about 20 groups solicited pledges from Orleans Parish School Board candidates for their “Public Schools Platform.”
Forward New Orleans asked the candidates for their commitment to support and promote eight specific mandates:
(1) Increasing the number of high quality, high performing schools,
(2) serving all students equitably,
(3) ensuring equal access to quality schools,
(4) enforcing school autonomy with accountability,
(5) acting as a responsible resource manager,
(6) engaging in a system-wide strategic planning and stakeholder engagement,
(7) collaboration in implementing best practices, and
(8) a commitment to academic excellence and equity for all public schools and students.
Among others, Forward New Orleans includes 100 Black Men of Greater New Orleans, Educate Now!, Business Council of New Orleans and the River Region, Louisiana Association of Charter Schools, Urban League of Greater New Orleans, New Schools for New Orleans, New Orleans regional Black Chamber of Commerce, and STAND for Children.
While there is some diversity in the coalition, there is also a clear pro-privatization, pro-business dominance that does not allow any deviation from the nearly 100 percent privatized system, and provide a platform true alternatives – traditional public neighborhood schools – are not represented in the platform.
“Forward New Orleans is pleased that these candidates gave studious consideration to these policy mandates and chose to endorse this important agenda for implementation of the next four years,” said Coleman Riley, managing director of the Business Council, in a news release. “While much progress has been made in the areas of access to quality educational opportunities and the equitable distribution of resources, we must ensure that the momentum continues and that the resolve for progress remains strong.”
The press release lists the following school board candidates as having pledged their support for the mandates: John Brown (District 1), Ethan Ashley (District 2), Sarah Usdin (District 3), Leslie Ellison (District 4), Ben Kleban (District 5) Woody Koppel (District 6) David Alvarez (District 6) and Nolan Marshall, Jr. (District 7).
Kwame Smith (District 7) is not on the list, and he said he found it inappropriate for the group to portray him either as someone who does or does not support these mandates.
He said he was invited to an interview, but works as a teacher and could not attend. In addition, Smith said he does not feel he needs to pledge support to an agenda put forth by the business community – his agenda is clear through his own campaign platform.
“My agenda,” said Smith, comes from the community who elects him. Smith’s platform includes: “Support Quality Neighborhood Schools, Fair & Equitable Admission Policies, Governance by Democratically Elected School Board, and Expand Student Choice by Developing More Skill Trade Programs.”
Each of the eight mandates details specific “must do’s” for the school board members. How the board members will actually be held accountable for doing these things – and how much power they really have given the privatized system – is unclear. But the mandates do attempt to address some of the privatization movement’s biggest failings, though not all, such as the loss of neighborhood schools, transportation, a lack of vocational training programs, and the overreliance on uncertified, unqualified teachers.
Under the first issue, “expanding high-quality schools,” it requires a “policy setting single-operator enrollment at 15% of district wide seats,” an apparent effort to prevent the public turned private business of operating schools from being monopolized by a single operator.
Other requirements are less precise. Under the second, “serving students equitably,” school board members must “explore ways to expand and improve services for the most disadvantaged students and students with special education needs.”
This vaguely attempts to address one of the biggest and most devastating failings of the privatization movement: the pushing out of kids who have additional needs many charter schools don’t want to deal with because it adds expense and lowers their all-important School Performance Scores. The “cherry picking” of only the most academically inclined and compliant students by charter operators has been well documented. Also well documented, particularly in a lawsuit brought by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is charter operators telling parents of kids with special needs they should not enroll in their school because they cannot provide services — which is illegal.
Another oft heard concern regards accountability in how schools are spending taxpayer dollars, providing transparency to the public, and abiding by laws.
A recent investigation by The Lens found that “only a handful of charter school boards in New Orleans were fully complying with a two-year-old state law that requires public bodies to post their minutes online, or an older law that requires the same for their agendas,” and after the investigation began, “few are completely falling into line with amendments to the state Open Meetings Law that legislators made in 2012 and 2014.”
The charter boards are appointed, not elected.
Other concerns have been raised over the past decade regarding top-heavy administrations and sky-rocketing administrative salaries, approved by the appointed charter boards.
Mandate four perhaps attempts to address this while prioritizing autonomy: “The School Board should respect the autonomy of charter schools and safeguard their programmatic independent. At the same time, the School Board must consistently hold schools accountable for meeting the academic, operational and financial standards established by the School board.”
Under mandate five, “act as a responsible resource manager,” the pledge requires “Maintaining a strong DBE policy that applies to all construction and procurement contracts.”
Another failing has been the disenfranchisement of the communities the privately run public schools serve. Mandate six on “stakeholder engagement” attempts to address this, stating “The School Board should undertake a focused and comprehensive system-wide strategic planning process that engages schools, parents and the community at large to improve student achievement.”
While each charter operator is now in competition with each other to access more students which more equal dollars, the seventh mandate asks that the School Board take the role of “facilitating school improvement by researching and sharing best practices with schools.”
The Forward New Orleans platform puts forth some specific, (and some vague) suggestions on how to address many of the issues that have plagued the privatization experiment and hurt children and families.
If the school board members indeed follow through on many of the mandates, there is real potential for improvement.
But skeptics will see further protection of privatization, and lip service without any genuine changes. With each charter operator acting as its own mini school district, such a pledge also raises the question of how much ability the school board members actually have to influence the decision making and spending power, which remains primarily fixed in the hands of the charter operators.
This article originally published in the November 7, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
