Protest planned to block changing John McDonogh into a charter school

14th November 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Travis M. Andrews
Contributing Writer

The charter of John McDonogh will be protested Thursday at 6 p.m. in front of the school.

Karran Royal, a self-proclaimed “education advocate and parent advocate” who was involved in plans to create the Greater Gentilly High School (now Lake Area New Tech Early College High School, a charter), is helping lead the protest against John White and the Recovery School District.

Royal said the protest seeks to “inform everyone in the community and beyond what’s really going on … with so-called public education reform in New Orleans.”

According to Royal, the RSD asked the community to create a “community plan” for John McDonogh High School, in order to reopen the school after the RSD’s $35 million renovation of the building. The plans were due on November 18, but John White, the superintendent of the RSD, an­nounced this past week that the school is set to be chartered.

“We don’t want the school chartered,” Royal said. “We want them to implement the community’s plan. We want to have a community board”

White said the RSD is holding a series of meetings asking for community input to put together a board to run the school, which he said will be heavily structured in regard to the principal Averil Sanders’ plan, the one to which Royal referred.

Royal said the plan will no longer be presented, though.

“It’s meaningless,” Royal said. “We finished the plan before the deadline. He never even intended to accept this plan.”

White said he does intend to accept the plan and implement it to make the school better for the community.

“I’ve never had a conversation with anyone about it not being a charter,” White said.

One of the protest’s large points, according to Royal, is that the school will lose its status as a community school, which White said is untrue.

“At present, John McDonogh is not a community school,” White said. “Children in the John McDonogh community are not attending.”

At the time of chartering, the school has a 45 percent graduation rate, meaning 45 percent of enrolled freshmen end up graduating, which White said was a “remarkable rate of failure.” He said the charter is to fix this, and it will be open to the community. There will be no applications, and no selective enrollment.

“This is an open enrollment school that will serve all kids,” White said.

Royal said the protest is not meant to be anti-reform, merely anti-chartering schools. It is not just about the chartering of John McDonogh but about the chartering of schools across the city.

“We are being forced into charter schools in this city,” Royal said. “This is not a choice in this community. They make decisions, then want our opinion on the back end.”

Royal said she does not think the charter schools are working.

“It’s like we’re moving around the chairs on the decks of the Titanic, the whole thing’s going down anyway.”

White, though, said the purpose is to make “academic gains as quickly as possible.”

“The reason we’re doing any of this is for the betterment of the kids,” White said.

The protest will be Thursday, November 17 at 6 p.m. at John McDonogh High School.

This article was originally published in the November 14, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper