Does New Orleans’ charter school system need reform?
20th July 2020 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Writer
The Better Choice Foundation which operated the Mary D. Coghill Charter School sued the Orleans Parish School Board in February 2020, in an attempt to keep NOLA Schools’ Superintendent Henderson Lewis from taking over the Mary Dora Coghill Charter School that the community-based foundation operated. Located at 4617 Mirabeau Ave. in New Orleans, the charter school’s foundation was operated by Pontchartrain Park residents, who took on the task of educating the area’s K-8 grade youth.
Judge Greg Gerard Guidry ruled in favor of Lewis and dismissed the BCF lawsuit in June 2020. Guidry, a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, is a Trump nominee who has been on bench a year.
Lynn Rhodes-Polk had only been on the job as principal for two months when Better Choice was informed that its charter would not be renewed because of its “F” school performance score. The school was also at the center of two Orleans Parish School Board probes into how it handles finances and grades.
Although Rhodes-Polk inherited the failing grade, she and Rayven Calloway, the CEO and Head of School, say they began turning the school around, including scoring an “A” rating from the state for financial compliance. They made staff changes and board changes to address complaints about the school’s social promotion program.
The educators say they were not afforded due process, nor did they get the support from the school district, which charters are entitled to when failing grades are incurred. “Every noncompliance issue Pamela Marshall got, we reversed,” Calloway says of the former Coghill principal. “We turned weaknesses into strengths,” Rhodes-Polk added.
“We were told in September, before the school performance scores came out, that our school was projected to be an ‘F,’” says Calloway. The Foundation was in the last year of its contract, which is why Lewis was able to recommend non-renewal.
The educators believe Coghill was singled out for non-renewal while other charters with multiple Fs are still operational. “Singleton has had three ‘Fs,’” Calloway says. Certification of charter school CEOs is also a point of contention for those who are certified.
“Unlike other charter agreements that were not renewed because of a school’s performance, those schools all had ‘F’ ratings for multiple years. That is not the case here,” Calloway wrote in a letter to the parents.
“At this time, Mary D. Coghill’s academic performance is anticipated to result in an ‘F’ letter grade based upon last year’s state assessment outcomes, which deems the school ineligible for renewal. Because of this, the charter contract with Better Choice Foundation who manages this school may not be recommended for renewal. As a result, a new operator would be selected to operate the school beginning in the 2020-2021 school year,” NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. wrote in a September 19, 2020 letter to parents.
“I was puzzled when I heard that Dr. Lewis’ recommendation was to turn Mary D. Coghill into a direct run school. Better Choice Foundation is the only board I know in Orleans Parish Schools where every member is a vested member of this community, so how in the best interest of the students, would a direct school be better operated other than the people in that community? I’m puzzled and I’m appalled,” Pastor Aubrey Watson, vice president of the BCF Board, told the Orleans Parish School Board, before the elected school board members voted on Lewis’ recommendation.
The OPSB voted 4-2 on December 19, 2020 to reject Lewis’ recommendation and to renew the Better Choice Foundation’s charter.
Parents and school leaders were elated. However, the OPSB vote was not valid. According to state law, a two-thirds vote, or five of seven board members, would have had to agree to renew the Better Choice’s charter agreement, in order to override Lewis’ recommendation. One board member, Sarah Usdin, was absent.
In a January 2020 letter to the Better Choice Foundation’s attorney, Camille Bryant, NOLA Public Schools’ general counsel, Kathy A. Moss, disputed the educators’ claim that the school performance score of one year should not be the basis for non-renewal.
“Coghill incorrectly asserts that the district accountability framework should use multiple years of data so that renewal doesn’t rely on one year of data,” Moss wrote. She went on to cite the district’s renewal rules which state that a charter school up for its first renewal can be reviewed based on one year of school performance data.
The Charter School Accountability Framework (CSAF) states that “…The CSAF only required a review of one year of school performance data.”
Even though they lost the lawsuit and the Better Choice Foundation has thrown in the towel, the two educators vow to continue the fight against what they see as an arbitrary system that is politically motivated. On June 30, 2020, after turning in the keys to Coghill, the educators joined the ranks of the unemployed.
“They’re getting rid of two capable leaders,” says Rhodes-Polk, who holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Elementary Education, two Master of Art degrees, Urban Education and Educational Leadership; Calloway had been a teacher and principal and earned a master’s degree. Both Calloway and Rhodes-Polk are currently pursuing doctoral degrees in Education.
Both Calloway and Rhodes-Polk believe the system is broken. “You have all these CEOs without credentials and our children suffer,” Calloway told The Louisiana Weekly.
Some observers believe the Coghill situation is the poster child for what’s wrong with the charter school system.
State Senator Joseph Bouie is looking at ways to reform the charter school system. “It’s the most egregious attack on the African-American community under the guise of Act 91,” says Bouie, an educator, and former Chancellor of Southern University in New Orleans. The legislator points to RS:17:3972, which explicitly states that the charter school system would be experimental.
ACT 91 called for the 49 schools currently under the jurisdiction of the Recovery School District (RSD) to be absorbed by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) by July of 2018. However, the legislation left the autonomy of the charter schools intact, meaning the charters would not be held accountable nor would they be subjected to guidance and oversight by the public school district.
“But Lewis will have the authority on authorization, renewals and revocations of charter contracts, as Act 91 shifts power from the school board to the superintendent, requiring a two-thirds vote by the school board, to override “all decisions related to school opening, renewal and closure,” according to the plan, Kari Dequine Harden wrote in The Louisiana Weekly in 2016.
“Dr. Raynard Sanders, who has over thirty years of experience in teaching, educational administration, and economic and community development in New Orleans, told Harden, “They [charter operators] are only interested in a system in which they answer to no one.”
“The charter system was supposed to collect data on what worked and what didn’t work and replicate successful models across the system,” but that didn’t happen, Bouie says.
“What they did to New Orleans schools was to set up an unprofessional and unempirical system. After 15 years and five billion dollars, there is not one piece of data that indicates that the experiment was successful,” Bouie adds.
Although charter school proponents say the system is working and schools are improving, statistics released in November 2019 tell a different story.
“A whopping 35 of the 72 schools in the all-charter district scored a D or F, meaning nearly half of local public schools (48%) were considered failing, or close to it, in the school year ending in 2019. Since then, six of the 35 have closed,” Della Hasselle wrote in a NOLA.com article.
According to one attorney, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “Act 91 was an assault on democracy. It is an attack on democracy for an unelected public servant to be making these decisions,” the lawyer said of the power vested in Henderson Lewis by Louisiana’s predominately Republican legislature. “They gave the people’s vote away. Voters have no say so about what happens in charter schools.”
“Today, public education in New Orleans is directed by a cadre of white people with no input from a largely African-American population. In the last decade, the public schools in New Orleans have, by and large, become centers for a few charter operators with no interest, expertise, or desire to improve academic achievements,” Sanders wrote in “21st Century Jim Crow Schools: The Impact of Charters on Public Education,” published by Beacon Press in 2018.
A look at a list of 21 NOLA CEOs bears out Sanders assertions. Nine of the CEOs listed are not certified to run schools and one has an expiring teacher certification and only holds a bachelor’s degree. Additionally, the section on the chart which lists the educational attainment of at least eight CEOs is blank.
Senator Bouie is looking into the Coghill takeover: “What he (Lewis) did to Coghill was wrong. That school was turning around when he wanted to close it. Lewis’ closure of Coghill means he’s starting all over again with experimentation.”
“They have their knee on our children’s neck,” Bouie says of the all-charter school system which only exists in Orleans Parish, where 96 percent of the public school population is Black. There are 64 parishes in Louisiana.
Moreover, the fact that Black people spearheaded the effort is a real tragedy, the legislator says.
Karen Carter Peterson sponsored Act 91, and former State Senator Ann Duplessis sponsored Act 35. “They (white charter proponents) sent two Black men, Dobard and Lewis, to go handle the business that messed up our kids. The community is hesitant to criticize Black people who are in powerful positions, but they are doing the same thing white racists would do,” Bouie asserts.
“Education is our civil rights struggle of the 21st Century,” says Bouie, who is pulling together community groups to address the inequities in the charter school system.
The Louisiana Weekly reached out to NOLA Schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. for an interview. A publicist with the school system provided documents on the voting procedure and renewal policies but the newspaper is still waiting to hear from Lewis, who recently sent out an announcement that NOLA Schools is seeking a new charter operator for Coghill.
This article originally published in the July 20, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
