NOLa.’s Charters want a seat at the fiscal table
25th November 2024 · 0 Comments
The news that the NOLA-PS “district” over-calculated local funding to at least $36 million from ad valorem and sales taxes raised eyebrows and questions: How could this happen? What is the impact on New Orleans charter schools’ children, teachers and staff?
It was reported that District staff used the entire calendar year instead of the relevant fiscal year period for tax revenue calculations.
The error shook the district, which appears to be the fiscal agent for a decentralized charter school system that operates autonomously with no district oversight or accountability because each charter school is its own LEA (Local Education Authority).
So, this is about money and who controls it. It’s always been about money, and private hands have been getting public education dollars under the guise of providing a better education to New Orleans students than was received by the 800 teachers who the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education fired after Hurricane Katrina.
Now, with only one school under its purview, The Leah Chase School, calling the NOLA-PS administration a “district” is akin to the spook that sat by the door.
They don’t call the administration the “school district,” it is the district. What was once the Orleans Parish School District (OPSD) is now the NOLA-PS, or New Orleans Public Schools, the public school district for Orleans Parish.
According to its website, NOLA-PS includes 67 schools, including 41 elementary schools, 23 high schools, and three K-12 schools. The Leah Chase School makes 68. Of course, technically, this is true if you read the return to the district law, but these assertions are false.
The district is only responsible for one school, and The Leah Chase School opened in February 2024.
The “district” is led by the elected Orleans Parish School Board and the central office, which is composed of a centralized staff hired and managed by the superintendent of schools. The website claims the central office is responsible for “holding schools to high consistent standards and systemwide programs, Early Childhood, Child Nutrition, and Special Needs programs.”
The truth is the truth. The idea that the central office and superintendent oversee any school but one is a bold-faced lie. And the central office had the nerve to put this farce into writing.
Still, the budgetary miscalculation caused shockwaves throughout the charter school system. Now, the organization representing charter schools wants to sit at the table to oversee the budget process.
Just as the state used the OPSD children’s failure to pass the LEAP test to justify taking over the Orleans Parish public schools, the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools (LAPCS) is using the budget miscalculation to justify charter operators’ being an oversight “workgroup” composed of operators and outside experts, to determine or instead investigate where the money goes and to steer it as they see fit.
When the state Legislature orchestrated the Orleans Parish School system takeover and turned it into the country’s first all-charter school district, they called it an education experiment.
When it became apparent more than two decades later that the charter schools under the auspices of the Recovery School District failed to reach NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress), they tossed the failed experiment and the charters back to the Orleans Parish School District, aka NOLA-PS.
However, using a sleight-of-hand maneuver, the schools were returned but remained autonomous with no oversight of their finances or any facet of operations. So, the return of the schools was a lot of nonsense.
Regardless of which NOLA-PS employee caused the budget overestimation, the entire NOLA-PS community feels the impact. Avis Williams resigned from her role as superintendent, saying it was because this happened on her watch.
Perhaps Williams’ resignation had much to do with the LAPCS’ scathing criticism of the “district.” Without calling her name or the name of any central office employee, the LAPCS’s passive-aggressive attitude in a three-page letter to the Orleans Parish School Board reeked of a financial coup. It dripped with criticism that is reminiscent of the state’s takeover justification.
The LAPCS wants its cake and to eat it, too. The charter schools want autonomy with no oversight or accountability and complete control over their schools’ budget decisions, which they already have.
Now, it wants to assertively take over the central office’s budgetary power.
Caroline Roemer, president of the LAPCS, delivered a scathing review of the district in an October 17 letter to the OPSB, using the miscalculation as a catalyst for change.
“In short, this district has yet to properly or successfully execute many of the functions they are directly responsible for as a school district – and functions that had previously worked until now,” Roemer wrote.
Roemer asked the OPSB to create a finance oversight workgroup of interested and knowledgeable finance officers to assist the district. “This would invite more stewardship and critical feedback by experts on the singular most important factor in a school’s success – school funding.”
And the figurehead, useless, elected school board is giving her what she wants.
NOLA.com reported on October 23 that board member Nolan Marshall suggested convening a group of city officials and business experts to advise the district on ensuring accurate future revenue projections.
Then, in a November 8 letter to school leaders and charter board members, the OPSB called for the district to hire a financial consultant, form a working group of outside experts and school leaders, devise a plan for communicating with school administrators, and produce a report explaining what went wrong.
The letter addressed every concern Roemer expressed. OPSB President Katie Baudouin and Olin Parker, finance committee chair, signed the letter.
And, viola, the central office and the superintendent’s office were stripped of their financial oversight power and ceded to a charter school organization based in Metairie and led by a political consultant, not an educator.
Roemer is the daughter of the late Louisiana Governor Charles Elson “Buddy” Roemer III and granddaughter of Charles Elson Roemer II, who served as the commissioner of administration from 1972 to 1980 in the first two terms of Governor Edwin Washington Edwards. Buddy Roemer was raised on a large cotton farm in northwest Louisiana called Scopena Plantation.
Ironically, the plantations of old, where Black people were enslaved and used for free labor to generate the generational wealth that many whites enjoy today, are similar in concept to the charter school system in New Orleans.
What we have here is a predominantly Black student body in a charter school system, in a predominantly Black city, that is run primarily by white people, who benefit from them like the overseers and owners of the plantations of old.
The Orleans Parish School Board stepped up to offer to lend the schools $15 million to continue their operations, but the money would have to be paid back.
Then, as if manna from heaven rained down, the City of New Orleans settled a five-year-old lawsuit last week, providing the schools with $20 million.
According to Verite News, the city offered to pay the $20 million in two $10 million payments to the School Board. The first payment will be made before the end of the year, and the second payment will be made before April 1, 2025.
The city agreed to allocate Caesars Casino’s support funds for education, roughly $2 million per year, to the School Board over the next ten years. Over the next decade, the city will dedicate money to education programs supporting mental and behavioral care for students and programs providing career counseling and vocational training.
With the property millage for education that voters renewed in 2023, which is expected to raise $420 million that will be invested in school facilities, the charter schools won’t have to worry about building repairs.
However, more money is needed to spend on students.
Another question that comes to mind is whether the state’s Minimum Foundation Program’s annual funding of $2,500 per pupil is enough to educate students, especially when Louisiana spends $25,032 to incarcerate an individual annually. Indeed, the idea that the state only has to provide public school children with a “minimum education foundation” is ignorant.
But that’s what we have in the state of Louisiana. As such, we must reach back, like the Sankofa bird in the African proverb, who looks back and brings its past knowledge to its present. We should recall the wisdom of Booker T. Washington, a formerly enslaved man who founded the Tuskegee Institute. Washington said, “Cast down your buckets where you are.”
This article originally published in the November 25, 2024 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
