At its meeting September 22, 2012, the F.A.M.E. board of Audubon Charter School approved the Orleans Parish School Board’s Office of Civil Rights Resolution. The OCRR mandates that every OPSB school must formally adopt the OCR’s procedural safeguards and grievance procedures.

“It is relative mostly to special ed students,” said principal Janice Dupuy. “It’s information regarding the rights of the students and the parents, which will be available before the child comes into the school. Before the parent has enrolled them into special ed, they will know their rights and what they need to succeed.” These rights are to be publicly posted on every OPSB school’s website, disseminated to parents, and included in student handbooks. Principal Dupuy pointed out that Audubon had already been doing all of this.

Hurricane Isaac not only dampened hallways and classrooms at Audubon’s Gentilly campus via window leakage — costing students an extra week of classes — it caused major roof and floor damage in many rooms and portables. The library’s ceiling caved badly enough to ruin one computer. The library is now closed for construction, which should take no more than a week. In the meantime, the board is waiting to see how much of the damage will be covered by the OPSB, which is in turn hoping for financial help from FEMA.

In order to make up for the school days lost to Isaac, Audubon has cancelled its “fall break,” (scheduled October 8, 9 and 10) as well as a teacher professional development day scheduled on September 21.

Since some Montessori and French teachers’ feared that the RSD’s formatted “OneApp” application process was tailored too broadly to accommodate a school as specialized as Audubon, the board decided to continue its participation in the Eastbank Collaborative of Charter Schools common application process, available on the websites of all EC schools. The deadline for applications is January 11, 2013.

A representative at the meeting from LaPort CPAs attested that Audubon’s recent audit for the year ending in June 2012 was “unqualified,” meaning the best the school could possibly be awarded.

In other business, the school’s new high school exploratory committee decided to hold its first meeting at 4:30 p.m. Oct. 11 at the Carrollton campus. Also, Audubon is now offering adult French classes at its Gentilly campus.

Present at the meeting were chairman Rev. Cornelius Tilton and vice chairman Timothy Jackson, plus Jolynn King, Eva Alito, Dereck Bardell, Jean-Claude Brunet, Yvonne Locke, Gregory Thompson, Principal Janice Dupuy, Lynette Brice, Dennis Smith, Ben Hicks, Sean Barney.