N.O. East residents picket outside Ben Franklin High School

21st May 2012   ·   0 Comments

By Zoe Sullivan
Contributing Writer

Roughly 30 students, parents and advocates representing both the Vietnamese and African-American communities gathered in the sun on the neutral ground across from Benjamin Franklin High School on May 17 for the school’s final board meeting of the year. They chanted and held signs with slogans like “beep, beep for the bus.” Passing drivers responded with supportive toots.

Ronald Johnson was one of these demonstrators. Johnson is currently a junior at Sarah T. Reed High School in New Orleans East, which, he says, is a “low school.”

“We have students with high GPAs (grade point average), straight As in middle school, perfect attendance, the whole nine,” Johnson told The Louisiana Weekly, “but you have to find your own way to get to Ben Franklin, if you get accepted. That doesn’t make any sense.” He added that “students from Reed will back me up on this 100 percent.”

Franklin is one of the top-ranked public high schools in the country, which makes attending a strong draw for students aiming to continue onto college. The crowd had made the trek from New Orleans East to express their frustration over the lack of transportation options for students living in that area. According to a press advisory issued by the Vietnamese Ameri­can Young Leaders Association of New Orleans (VAYLA), 25 percent of Ben Franklin students live in the Eastern part of New Orleans.

Leslie Rey, who handles transportation contracts for the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB), told The Louisiana Weekly that OPSB’s direct-run schools are mandated by law to provide transportation for children that live more than a mile from their school. Benjamin Franklin High is a charter school, which raises an important distinction. “Charter schools do not necessarily have to abide by [this rule],” Rey said, “whereas we do.” Rey explained that each transportation route costs OPSB approximately $275,000 and that the district currently has 60 routes serving six schools, three high schools and three elementary schools.

Faced with the spirited group rallying across from the school, the president of Benjamin Franklin’s board, Duris Holmes, came out to the neutral ground to speak with the rally’s organizers. He offered them a spot for two speakers to address the board for 10 minutes. Jacob Cohen, VAYLA’s assistant director, used the megaphone to inform the demonstrators that his organization had been trying to land a spot on the agenda for three weeks. “If it wasn’t for people coming out here, they would not even put us on the agenda….They do not take our concerns with urgency. But because we are out here…we are on the board agenda today.” He also said that it was unfair that residents in the East don’t have a bus “just because we do not have a critical mass of wealthy parents who can pay for a private bus.”

Cohen told The Louisiana Weekly that although VAYLA began the “Ride to Success” campaign at the start of this year, they have been aware of the issue since 2010 thanks to over 100 interviews that the organization has done with area residents. “This was one of the single-largest barriers that people identified to quality education in New Orleans East,” Cohen explained.

Holmes agreed with Rey’s cost estimate and calculated that it would probably take three buses to serve the East. He took umbrage at the idea of charter schools escaping their responsibilities. “The acting superintendent was not going to open any East Bank schools after Katrina,” Holmes told The Louisiana Weekly, stressing that he disagreed with the trend of “dumping all your educational responsibilities on charter schools.”

Asked whether the new increase in millage that the OPSB approved earlier last week would help with the cost of providing a bus service, Holmes said that it would probably cover the cost of one-fourth of a bus.

Education advocate Karran Harper Royal was also present at VAYLA’s rally. She told The Louisiana Weekly that she had sued the school board over the fact that her child’s charter school was not providing transportation. Harper Royal said that the settlement agreement to that case stipulates that all Orleans Parish charter students are entitled to free transportation. She went on to say that tokens for the public transit system didn’t seem to present a reasonable solution in the case of the East because of the poor quality of RTA service there.

Pointing out that the majority of the Benjamin Franklin students coming from New Orleans East are students of color, VAYLA’s press advisory also argued that by not providing bus service to that community, the school is “effectively denying low-income and geographically isolated students access to the school.” Advocates from VAYLA say that a family will spend approximately $200 per month on gas commuting to and from the school and affirm that “numerous families have pulled their children out of school due to the financial hardship.”

In a phone interview with The Louisiana Weekly prior to the rally, Dr. Timothy Resnack, principal of Benjamin Franklin High, explained that the possibility of free bus service is new territory for the school. “We’re trying to see our way through this problem and work with them. There’s nothing to hide. It’s not a matter of will, it’s a lot of other stuff. There’s money, and the implication that if you do this with one group you have to do it with all. It’s only fair.”

This article was originally published in the May 21, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper