Lagniappe Academies tenure as charter school ends

18th May 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Kari Dequine Harden
Contributing Writer

The final days of life for Lagniappe Academies were painful.

In just a few months, the school transformed from a cheerfully intimate learning environment where the majority of young students were thriving, to a floundering and failed business at the center of scandal and perplexing politics.

On Friday, May 8, a few remaining students played basketball out front of the modular campus in Tremé while they awaited their rides home.

The end date for students had been moved up by about a month.

“It’s the best school,” said a sullen first-grader. “They are so nice. My mama’s gonna be so sad.”

Asked why their school was closing, one boy stated, “We don’t know why.” Another boy jumped in, “It’s because we need a handicap class.”

Days after the state leaked a confidential report to the media on March 3 alleging serious violations of special education laws by Lagniappe’s top administrators, the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) voted to close the small school.

Originally scheduled to run through early June, the Lagniappe board moved up the last day because “It came down to pure funding,” said board member Dan Forman. “We wanted to serve the kids as long as we could but the runway ended in terms of financing.”

On the students’ last day, top administrators at the center of the scandal were long gone, having disappeared from sight within days of the scathing report.

The Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE) and Recovery School District (RSD) repeatedly refused to answer questions about how the administrators named in the report were being held accountable for breaking the law.

The rest of the faculty and staff stayed to the end, and some took over the running of daily operations in addition to their teaching duties.

“We still don’t know our last day of work,” said teacher Jennifer Pike-Vassell, as she helped students onto the bus. Pike-Vassell took on a leadership role in bringing the teachers’ and parents’ concerns before the board.

Pike-Vassell said she had been part of a charter school closure before in New York, and while heartbreaking, there had at least been a level of professionalism and a “sense of timeline.”

“It’s very hard. Yet everyone has still come to work every day.”

Another teacher expressed fear about the possibility of suddenly losing health insurance for his 2-year-old son.

Teacher Woody Rinker said that it was hard to say goodbye to his Kindergarten students after seeing them make such tremendous progress. Also a musician, Rinker said he doubted if he would continue teaching.

Pike-Vassell said she tried to communicate to her kids, and parents who fought to keep the school open, that, “sometimes in life you can fight for things that are very important and still lose. And that it’s nothing that we did wrong and nothing they did wrong – it’s bigger than us. And we need to help each other get to the next step.”

One parent approached Pike-Vassell and requested lesson plans “for the next couple weeks,” so her son would not fall behind as a result of the lost time.

At a dismal board meeting the following Monday, board vice chair Dan Henderson told the teachers that their salaries and benefits were guaranteed through May. Beyond that, things were uncertain.

On behalf of the teachers, Pike-Vassell requested severance pay from the school’s primary benefactor, founder, and board chair Ray Smart.

“With the sudden announcement of the school’s closure, there has not been enough time for staff to adequately plan and save for an uncertain future. Money is not everything, but right now this type of support would give each staff member the respect and dignity that we deserve. Each one of us has met the expectations we were asked to meet, and in fact, has gone above and beyond to serve our students and the greater mission of the school,” Pike-Vassell wrote in a letter to Smart.

The board described the school as an “essentially bankrupt organization.” Henderson said that getting more money from Smart’s Foundation would be a “hard sell.”

Forman said that the school’s lease in the Tremé parking lot was dependent on their charter renewal. When it wasn’t renewed, “They called for our mortgage note.”

Pike-Vassell said that the teachers were told that their employment was dependent on the sale of the modular buildings, which will soon be auctioned.

The parking lot then must be returned to its prior condition, requiring repaving and the removal of plumbing and electrical infrastructure.

Forman speculated that things could have potentially gone differently, “If we’d had a permanent home, because the OPSB wanted us, and because of our success.”

The RSD failed in their obligation to find the school a permanent campus in their own neighborhood, Forman said.

While the DOE report contained documentation of serious and reprehensible mismanagement of special education requirements on the part of top administrators – and an effort to cover up deficiencies – the outrage from parents in response to the closure told a different story.

“They got my baby and took care of my baby like I would,” parent Alicia Parker said about her Kindergartener who is overcoming a speech impediment. “Then they took him to the next level.”

Part of the school’s driving philosophy was small class size and one-on-one attention.

Parker, who spends nearly every day at the school volunteering, said that “all 166 of the kids are my babies. I’m not going to see my babies anymore. They are my world.”

She said her husband compared the closing to the loss of a loved one.

Parker said that everything the parents tried to tell the DOE and RSD “fell on deaf ears.” She said that there was never an apology issued to the families. Pike-Vassell said that no one ever apologized to the faculty and staff, either.

The quote covering one wall of the brightly colored cafeteria, bolstered by the school’s scores showing consistently growing academic success, also tells a different story. In giant type-face on the wall is a quote from John Ayers, former director of the Cowen Institute for Public Education Initiatives:

“If we have a pocket of excellence that may be Lagniappe – and they may be very proud of what is happening – how do we get that innovation to spread?”

The chain of events that resulted in the school’s sudden closure lead many to believe that there was something more at play.

Parents pointed to a disgruntled and vindictive former Teach for America teacher who took her grievances to BESE.

Never before had the state board closed a school for special education law violations, despite the common knowledge that violations were widespread in New Orleans, and as documented in a recently settled lawsuit filed against the state by the Southern Poverty Law Center four years ago.

“Our special education teacher died,” lamented Forman.

According to the LDOE’s own records, Lagniappe’s annual review for the 2013-2014 school year shows perfect marks for “Special Education, 504 Accommodations, and Other At-Risk Student Populations.” In seven separate categories, including many of the exact same requirements cited as reason for closure, Lagniappe received four points out of four points possible.

Parents of students with special needs spoke out in support of the services they received. The report focused primarily on interviews with staff no longer employed by the school.

The timeline of the events leading to closure was also disconcerting for many observers.

State law requires that charter schools be informed of a decision of nonrenewal by Jan. 31. Had this been followed, the school could have potentially avoided the displacement of the children.

After the special education problems were brought to the board’s attention last fall, the next step was a corrective action plan from Lagniappe. In an interview with The Lens on March 13, Henderson said that they began implementing that corrective action plan last November. He said that the board was under the impression that the issues were resolved in the corrective action plan, which he said had been agreed upon by both sides.

Then on January 7, BESE district representative Kira Orange Jones sent a letter to Superintendents John White and Patrick Dobard requesting that the renewal decision be delayed.

In the letter that was sent to all BESE members, Orange Jones wrote: “I am very concerned about what has been laid out in these documents.

These findings represent serious violations of the law and students’ rights that I do not think can be fully addressed through the corrective action plan submitted by the school. That these things were allowed to occur also raise broader questions about the operation of the school.

At this time, I am not comfortable voting on a renewal for Lagniappe Academies and would prefer to have more information before doing so. At Tuesday’s committee meeting, I will move that BESE defer its vote until March while more information can be compiled regarding how students and families were served at Lagniappe.”

Orange Jones then requests that the state prepare a report elaborating on the findings, and present it to BESE for review no later than Feb. 27.

While there were clearly serious violations in need of fixing, it is unclear precisely why Orange Jones felt that the Lagniappe decision needed to be delayed past the state’s deadline, past the OneApp deadline, and past a date that would be feasible for the school to change administration or charter operators.

Orange Jones is also the director of the regional Teach For America office.

The alarm and sharp focus on special education law violations from a BESE member is an unusual occurrence over the past decade of privatization. The state has never closed a school for violating special education law.

During the Lens interview, Henderson said that the board, of Orange Jones’ request for delay and further investigation, “We interpreted that as a witch hunt, which I certainly don’t think that it was. But at this point – I can’t think of another word.”

Orange Jones did not reply to repeated requests for comment. According to parents and teachers, Orange Jones and Dobard never set foot in the school to see things firsthand.

Parker said that in her conversation with Orange Jones, it seemed as though Orange Jones had some sort of “personal vendetta” against Lagniappe.

Last week, the Center for Popular Democracy and The Coalition for Community Schools New Orleans released a report examining what it deemed the state’s “broken” system of oversight and the waste and mismanagement of billions of taxpayer dollars.

The report included Lagniappe as a case study, and concluded:

“The situation at Lagniappe shows exactly the problems with the state’s oversight structure for charter schools. The state relies on a largely self-reporting oversight structure that is easily manipulated by the schools themselves – sometimes for multiple years, as happened at Lagniappe. Upon discovering that a serious problem exists, rather than developing a solution that gives the school’s students and teachers some much-needed stability – such as brining in a different charter operator, or returning the school to local control – the state’s solution for struggling schools is to close them, effectively punishing students and families for problems outside of their control. Lagniappe Academy is a story of how the state is failing Louisiana students, not protecting them.”

Forman said that before March, the school was operating on the assumption that the charter would be renewed without question. He said that Lagniappe’s “action plan” to remediate the special education problems had been approved by the state.

Pike-Vassell was left feeling incredulous at the state’s claim that closing Lagniappe is an example of successful “oversight” and “accountability.” She wrote in an email: “We’ve been waiting for the supposed teams to come and help with accountability—indeed, that would be a relief in the sense of an unbiased set of checks and balances. But how many who had a hand in this—and other—school closings never even set foot in the school? Or based crucial reports on a limited number of site visits not even speaking with all stakeholders/employees? This was not just a ‘failed organization’ as has been suggested: indeed, it’s not that simple. Instead, it was the failure of a larger bureaucratic COMMUNITY to work together to save a much-needed community school. If they would have even cared to try, it would have been obvious that working together could have opened the accessible and attainable creative means to make it happen.”

While the Lagniappe students were supposed to be prioritized in the OneApp school assignment process, a letter sent by parent Yoshekia Brown to DOE officials during the final weeks of school suggests otherwise.

Brown wrote, of her son: “Jordan is not leaving Lagniappe Academies because of wrongdoing on his or my part. We are both victims of poor decisions made by adults. I work in the school system and understand the OneApp process very well. What I cannot understand is being told that I would receive one of my choices during the 1st round, and now being told that I have no placement and will need to participate in the 2nd chance round in hopes that I will get what I as a mother “choose” for my son.

Jordan should not suffer for adult failures. I refuse to accept that my son is a victim of a random selection process. He is an intelligent, brilliant young Black male with a promising future ahead of him. He will not be a statistic or a product of a failed system. The parents of Lagniappe have been forced into this process and now that we are cooperating, we are still being forced to deal with circumstances beyond our control. My son should not, and will not, suffer for the trickle-down effects of poor adult choices.”

Pike-Vassell said that her students spent their last day sharing artwork and poems about saying goodbye, and talking about what was going to happen next, and what they were worried about.

There were a lot of tears, she said.

Pike-Vassell expressed frustration, and contempt for the decision-making process that resulted in the devastating closure: “One of the haunting aspects of the Lagniappe closure is that the governing authorities responsible for the closure were virtually never here (some even perhaps never were on campus). How can decisions be made without experientially even being present on a campus of staff and students? How are parent voices not more crucial in determining the fate of one of our educational endangered species—the community school? It is heartbreaking to see a school that could have been “transformed” genuinely than just shut down? The RSD uses the word transformation in an all-encompassing manner to describe these types of situations. But I fail to see the “transformation” here—it’s purely and simply a closure. Let’s call it what it is and stop playing the political games. Students and families and employees have all lost what has taken so long to build, and some of those responsible for that decision never even visited the campus? Or even interviewed staff members still existing? It’s difficult to stand in front of students year after year and speak about standing up for what’s right, and your duty as an adult to protect them and to make them feel safe, and then to have no truly adequate explanation for a school closure of this nature.”

Following Monday’s board meeting, Forman reiterated one point. “On behalf of the teachers, we did not fail the kids. They received the best education they could possibly get. I believe the RSD failed the kids.”

This article originally published in the May 18, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.