Fight over fate of John Mac continues
20th January 2015 · 0 Comments
By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer
For lead attorney Shawon Bernard, the lawsuit filed on Jan. 9 alleging a violation of the Louisiana Open Meetings Law is one more battle in the larger effort to see John McDonogh High School returned to local governance.
“At what point does the local school board get to do their job in terms of educating students in New Orleans without the oversight of the Recovery School District?” Bernard asked.
John Mac’s community advocates and alumni, joined by the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) have expressed a strong desire to see the school returned to local control. Yet the state remains aggressively intent on their “right” to keep John McDonogh under their governance – despite having failed to improve the school in more than nine years.
The “A” rated Orleans Parish school district is at capacity in terms of the number of students they can educate, Bernard said. By blocking the return of schools that were seized by the state following Hurricane Katrina, the district can’t grow, she argued.
In December, the OPSB filed a lawsuit against the RSD challenging their authority to open new schools in buildings owned by the OPSB.
Future is Now, the last charter operator hand-picked by the state to run John Mac, left in a cloud of disgrace after exploiting the children on a reality television show and posting a shockingly low School Performance Score of 16.5 out of 150, despite CEO Steve Barr’s self-aggrandizing proclamations and his (taxpayer subsidized) $250,000 annual salary to run a single school with fewer than 400 students.
John McDonogh was closed at the end of the 2013-2014 school year. Plagued with mold, termite damage, exposed asbestos, and an overall deterioration of conditions, the facility remains in desperate need of repair.
At the Nov. 12 Louisiana State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) committee meeting regarding RSD matters, an item giving the RSD the authority to select a new operator for John Mac was added to the agenda without following the legal protocol outlined in the Louisiana Open Meetings Law – the basis for Bernard’s lawsuit filed against RSD Superintendent Patrick Dobard, BESE President Chas Roemer, BESE, and the Louisiana Department of Education.
The only item on the agenda related to John Mac at that meeting was for BESE to consider an update on the “community engagement process” underway to determine the future of John Mac.
According to the lawsuit: “Since BESE had asked the OPSB and the John McDonogh Sr. High Steering Committee to work together in suggesting the future use of John McDonogh Sr. High School, the public had no way of knowing that BESE, with no public notice, would abruptly abandon the entire collaborative process and seek proposals from charter management groups to operate John McDonogh Sr. High School.”
According to Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law, an item can be added to the agenda during a meeting only with “unanimous approval of the members present.” Two BESE members, Lottie Beebe and Carolyn Hill, objected to the substitute motion to issue a request for proposals.
In addition, Bernard said, the law requires that if a unanimously approved item is added during a meeting, there be a public comment period prior to the vote. There was no such public comment period added at the November meeting.
“Since an item was added, it has to be added following the law,” Bernard contended.
Before passing the bar exam in October, Bernard spent the past 25 years of her career in education. She served as a classroom teacher, administrative assistant, assistant principal at four schools, and a principal.
It was during her time as assistant principal at John Mac that Bernard decided she wanted to become a lawyer.
The decision came, she said, “because as I worked for the RSD, I saw many of the laws being changed and people were unaware – and I knew something had to be done.” So, Bernard said that because she could not pay an attorney, and because she understood the issues from the education side, she decided to embark on a new career in educational law. Bernard said that too often she saw moneyed interests and political motives being put ahead of the best interest of the public.
On January 8, the day before Bernard filed the lawsuit, Attorney General Buddy Caldwell issued an opinion that the John Mac community advocates had been waiting on since September. The AG’s opinion was regarding whether BESE has the legal authority to determine control of the John Mac facilities.
Bernard said that the lawsuit had nothing to do with the AG opinion, and that she was unaware the opinion would be released during the same week the lawsuit was filed.
The opinion, which is not legally binding, stated that the RSD has “the authority to determine the current and proposed use and control of the John McDonogh High School facility in New Orleans.”
The opinion also stated that the RSD’s authority exists “unless and until BESE votes to remove such use and control.”
But Bernard is not unrealistic about the chances of BESE returning the school to local control. “We will never get the votes,” she said. BESE member Beebe, a consistent dissenter, has described BESE as “rubber stamped” in favor of Superin-tendent John White’s agenda.
According to the RSD, BESE approval doesn’t really matter anyway. The RSD issued the following response to Bernard’s lawsuit and the alleged Open Meetings Law violation:
“The Attorney General’s opinion makes it clear that the Recovery School District is the entity charged with selecting operators to open high-quality charter schools in the buildings under RSD’s control. The RSD is fulfilling this responsibility through the Request for Applications process by soliciting a wide diversity of applications for the privilege of serving students in RSD facilities, including the John McDonogh High School Facility. The RSD retains this right with or without a BESE vote asking it to do so.”
While the OPSB and Bernard are attempting to halt the RSD’s request for applications altogether, the RSD continues to move forward in selecting an operator. As of the Dec. 8 deadline, six organizations had applied to run the school.
Firstline Schools, one of the charter operator being considered by the RSD to run John Mac, saw a decline in the School Performance Scores in all five of their schools over the 2013-2014 school year. Firstline is at risk of losing its charter contract for Joseph S. Clark Preparatory High School, which has consistently ranked as an “F” school.
Firstline is proposing to move Clark into the John Mac facilities.
Every year, Charter Manage-ment Operators are given additional schools to run, including failing operators – so “Why is the OPSB – the board we elected – not allowed to expand?” Bernard argued.
The other charter operators who have applied include Bricolage Academy, Encore Academy, KIPP New Orleans, the Linda School and Morris Jeff Community School.
KIPP is proposing to move KIPP Believe into the John Mac building. Bricolage is proposing to move their engineering-focused elementary school into the building, with plans to expand through the 8th grade by 2019.
Morris Jeff is proposing to expand their current elementary school into a high school, while Encore and Linda want to launch an entirely new school in the John Mac facilities.
In terms of the OPSB applying for the school, Bernard said it doesn’t make sense for one district to request to be governed by another district.
The elusive $35 million renovation of the dilapidated John Mac facilities, promised by John White himself in March of 2012, has yet to begin. No public meetings regarding the design and scope of the renovations have been held at this time.
According to the RSD, “Design and meetings related to it will not begin in earnest until a charter operator has been selected.”
The RSD gave the following timeline for the school: “Procurement: January 2015-March 2015, Selective Demolition: April 2015-June 2015,
Design: February 2015-February 2016, CMAR Consultant Procurement: March 2015-July 2016, Construction: March 2016-March 2018, Students in building: Fall 2018.”
The RSD has previously stated that the school would open in 2016, with renovations beginning during the summer of 2014.
The RSD then stated that it would open in 2017. The repeated delays have generated speculation in the John Mac community about the authenticity of the pledged $35 million, and the real estate value of the desirable Esplanade Ridge address.
While the RSD believes it is their legal right to keep John Mac, Bernard said that sometimes the law must be challenged, and that “We are here to call out every illegal move they make.”
The democratically governed, financially stable, and high-performing local school district must be allowed to expand, Bernard repeatedly emphasized. Give the school back to the OPSB, Bernard advocates, and “Let’s see what they can do.”
Bernard knows well from experience the challenges of creating a successful high school, calling it “a challenge for any entity.” But she believes the local board deserves a chance to open a high school that admits all students.
“Give the OPSB an opportunity to succeed or fail,” Bernard said. “See if they can absorb opening an open-enrollment high school.” The RSD was only meant to be a temporary entity, she noted. If the RSD is without a plan for John Mac, “then why wouldn’t they give it back?”
While the lawsuit seeks an immediate halt to the RSD’s request for application process, the RSD is moving forward with their plans to announce a new operator in coming weeks.
The RSD listed a number of “community stakeholder” groups taking part in the process, but Bernard points out that those groups, for the most part, have not been involved in the effort over the past nine years to make John Mac a high-performing school.
And in terms of creating an environment of “choice,” Bernard said that there should be a choice that is an alternative to an RSD charter school.
If another school is “forced” upon the John McDonogh community, Bernard said, “and it doesn’t feel like the community was involved in the selection, it will not be successful.”
This article originally published in the January 19, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
