John Mac’s future still up in the air

28th May 2014   ·   0 Comments

By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer

When Louisiana Superintendent John White has national media with him in New Orleans, he likes to go to John Mac to make promises.

In the fall of 2011, White spoke with a Wall Street Journal reporter Matthew Kaminski about New Orleans as the “national laboratory of educational reform.”

At the time, White was the superintendent of the Recovery School District (RSD).

The story begins with: “At John McDonogh High School in this city’s Esplanade Ridge district, the new superintendent points to a broken window boarded up with plastic. Nobody thought to fix it properly. ‘Why? Because these are the poor kids,’ says John White, who arrived in New Orleans this spring. ‘The message is: We don’t care.’”

But last week, as the kids finish their final days of school nearly three years after the Wall Street Journal interview, the windows are still boarded up with plastic and plywood.

The school will now close for renovations, and according to the RSD, will reopen in 2017.

But after the RSD failed to run the school successfully as a direct-run public school, and then failed the students and community even more abysmally when they chartered the school to Future is Now New Orleans (FINS) in 2012, ques­t­ions remain unanswered about who will operate the school when it opens, and whether or not it will be a “world class” culinary arts high school as promised on national television by White himself.

In a March 2012 interview, White stood in the gymnasium at John McDonogh in front of MSNBC cameras with ESPN reporter Digger Phelps.

In that interview, White praised the arrival of FINS and its CEO Steve Barr, calling Barr a “fantastic leader,” and promised a “great teacher in every classroom.”

White also officially pledges the $35 million for renovating John Mac, which is FEMA money even though on camera White said it was coming from the state of Louisiana.

Reality under FINS was instead the worst school performance score in the entire city for a high school that is not an alternative high school (9.3 out of 150), and a television series filmed at the school during FINS’ first year that infuriated the community for its misrepresentation and exploitation of the children.

Ironically, “Blackboard Wars,” which aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network in 2013, begins with Barr and principal Marvin Thompson arriving as self-described heroes who are going to turn the school around and save it from the community that let it down. They declare inevitable success as the school year has barely just begun.

And starring on the 6-episode reality show, White’s “great teacher in every classroom,” appears to have come in the form of an inexperienced, uncertified 21-year-old Teach for America recruit who cries every episode, regularly admits her own failures as a teacher, and tells her students that they don’t appreciate everything she does for them.

White declined a request for an interview about the future of John McDonogh High School. He also refused to answer a question about accountability for the failure of both the RSD and of FINS. He also refused to answer whether or not he would be following through on his televised promise of turning John Mac into a world class culinary arts high school with five kitchens, and into “the best high school in the state of Louisiana” through a partnership with the Louisiana Restaurant Association.

The decision for a culinary school, White boasted to MSNBC cameras, came from canvasing 500 houses in the surrounding neighborhoods.

“We knew we had to start with the community. We had to bring people back into this school.” White said in the interview.

“John’s the reason why this is all becoming a reality,” Phelps said.

White referred the question about culinary arts school to the RSD. The RSD also would not make anyone available for a phone interview, and gave the following response: “We are going to work with the new operator to ensure there is a robust career and technical program for burgeoning industries in New Orleans like culinary arts.”

According to Zoey Reed, spokeswoman for the RSD, they will not begin the search for a new operator until the current school year finishes. Graduation was Friday, May 23.

However, many in the John Mac community have good reason to be distrustful of the RSD, in that the selection of FINS occurred in what many deemed a backroom deal without following due process.

Then, the announcement to close John Mac this year came as a shock and without any notice, as well as the announcement that the FINS charter will not be renewed when the school reopens – a decision that also violates the state’s own process of revoking and renewing charters.

“For the RSD to grant a charter to Future is Now Schools without a competitive process—they were basically promised John Mac by John White when he was superintendent of RSD—and then to willy-nilly revoke the charter in two years without due process was baffling to many,” said John McDonogh Advisory Committee (JMAC) Secretary Ann Marie Coviello. “It supports the claim by many anti-charter activists that they are experimenting on children. In this case, they experimented on children who are least likely to be resilient as they have to move to another school. These kids having to change schools will be disruptive to their lives in ways we can’t know, predict or imagine.”

Now, the John Mac community is determined to be well-organized—and to be heard—as new plans are made for the soon-to-be-renovated school.

A community meeting was held on Friday, May 16, to discuss the future of John Mac, and to try to ensure that the community has a voice in what happens next to the school. “This should be a truly community-based school so the community has a say,” JMAC Chair Clarence Robinson said at the meeting. “RSD had a shot at it. And it was a complete failure.”

The advisory committee held the meeting in conjunction with the John McDonogh Alumni Association, “because we thought that there would be sense of urgency in the community and among educators and politicians to address the disruption to the lives of students and families that happens when a school closes,” said Coviello.

“Some of our most vulnerable students go to John McDonogh,” she continued. “You can drive by the school at 10:30 at night and see kids sitting on the steps. These kids literally have no place to go. In spite of the epic failure of the charter operator, Future is Now New Orleans, there were many good things happening in the past two years, including science club trips, the revival of the legendary John McDonogh Marching Band, lots of one-on-one attention for students, and a sense that this was a place some of the most unwanted and displaced young people could call home.”
While the RSD was invited to attend, no one showed up.

The Lens live-blogged the meeting, and in their story show a surprise appearance by Orleans Parish School Board President Nolan Marshall, Jr., though Marshall told reporters at the meeting he did not want to be on the record.

According to The Lens, Marshall advised Robinson and the others at the meeting that they get a group of permanent educators together and write a charter.

Coviello said that they were hoping to get an updated report from the RSD on three questions: What was being done to help students make the transition to other schools; What was being done to secure valuables, archival materials, library books, band instruments, etc.,? and; How did the RSD plan to include the community during the design, re-construction, and re-opening of the school?

But, according to Coviello, the “RSD refused to attend the meeting, showing again their contempt for the John McDonogh students, parents, teachers, alumni and community members. Dana Peterson, whose wife is a state senator and chairperson of the Louisiana Democratic Party, is supposedly the “community liaison” on the John Mac closure issue. He refused to answer emails or phone calls, as did Patrick Dobard and Ron Bordelon.”

Still, Coviello said the meeting was productive in that JMAC, alumni, and other community members were able to establish some goals regarding their questions, and circulate a petition calling on RSD to secure John Mac valuables, re-open the school under the name “John McDonogh High School,” and meaningfully include students, parents, teachers, alumni and community members in the decision-making process moving forward with the design, construction and re-opening process.

Reed said that an architect has been hired, and a public input meeting on the renovation will be held, but that it has not yet been scheduled. She also said that the RSD is not allowed to change the name on the building, and that the valuables will be stored in an RSD storage facility.

Coviello said that members of JMAC and alumni are also taking the idea of writing a community-based charter application very seriously. It is a major undertaking, but they aren’t willing to let White and the RSD make decisions that will again harm the children without a fight.

“When John McDonogh re-opens in two to three years, we will be ready with a plan to create a visionary, cutting-edge high school that will offer a new choice for student seeking a high school education that combines the best of academic rigor, vocational programs, outstanding extra-curricular activities, and locally-based, experienced teachers and administrators,” Coviello said. “No one who cares about children would have closed this school so hastily and with so little regard for the kids in the school.”

This article originally published in the May 26, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.