Lens reporter Marta Jewson wrote this piece for a series on covering school closures. It is reprinted here with permission from The Grade.
School closures are different in New Orleans — not the closures themselves, which happen annually in the nation’s only marketplace-model essentially all-charter city, but in how highly decentralized the schools are and in the history of parental disenfranchisement that marks the city’s history.
Parents, staff, and the public must navigate multiple levels of government to weigh in on the life-altering decisions that are being made at both the school and district levels.
In an education environment so highly decentralized that some call it a system of schools rather than a school system, journalists and parent activists must serve as translators for other school parents and staff.
In a city where families were systematically disenfranchised after Hurricane Katrina, journalistic coverage is all the more essential.
In a city where families were systematically disenfranchised after Hurricane Katrina, journalistic coverage is all the more essential.
For more than a dozen years, I’ve been honored to work alongside a cadre of parents, educators, students, and other supporters who scan charter school board and committee agendas to look for hints of school closures (among other large items) that can hide in plain sight.
Reporting on school closures in New Orleans is both difficult and heartbreaking.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina swept over the city and federal levees failed — resulting in devastating flooding. In the following months, before residents could return to their homes, the legislature approved new language in the school reform legislation, allowing the state-run Recovery School District to take control of more than 100 city schools. The emergency transition made it even harder for families to have a voice in rebuilding their community when the majority of school decisions were relocated to Baton Rouge.
Even after residents were able to return and begin rebuilding in the city, for years, school closure decisions were made at public meetings more than an hour away — and not by the board members New Orleanians had elected to run their schools.
Even if students move to a higher performing school, the loss of their school community takes a toll we may not understand. It is a process children shouldn’t have to experience multiple times in their school careers if their families don’t choose to — which raises questions about true “choice” in the competition-based system. The district’s free-market system has guard rails — high-stakes renewals that shutter poor-performing schools — but such a system can both suggest a parent’s choice was wrong or that they didn’t have the choice for an academically stronger school and acknowledge that the district hasn’t provided a quality school for their child.
Our children were placed, not by their choice, in a system attempting to solve weed out poor performing schools — but the very principle of an open enrollment system striving to ensure students have access to good schools — despite their zip codes — does not solve the problem of containing 20 zip codes within the bounds of the city system.
Some schools desperately need intervention for academics, special education services, safety, and other critical elements of a quality education. But we must weigh the potential academic gains with the trauma of uprooting children from their educational communities. The question often arises: Could intervention come in the form of support instead of closure?
We must weigh the potential academic gains with the trauma of uprooting children from their educational communities.
It is my job to be empathetic and elevate student, parent, and staff voices so that they are heard as resoundingly as officials from district and charter organizations. I am honored to have that privilege and share some lessons I’ve learned:
DO empower parents, teachers, and community members to understand, interpret, and, on occasion, enforce open meetings and public records law.
Nascent volunteer charter boards often struggle with state transparency laws in their early years.
Over the almost 13 years that I’ve covered New Orleans charter schools, the majority have become better about following state open meeting and public record laws, including clarity in agenda action items.
But due to charter networks being smaller in size and their boards being composed of unelected volunteers, their meetings don’t receive nearly the scrutiny that the traditional Orleans Parish School Board does.
DON’T ignore innocuous agenda items. Read and question thoroughly.
Would you know your child’s school was closing if you saw this item on the school board’s agenda? “Approval of Action(s) Designed to Drive Efficiencies in the Network and fully utilize the Avery Alexander site.” Probably not.
Little did Gentilly Terrace Charter School parents and staff, nor myself, realize the charter board planned to vote to close the school at their board meeting.
While the Orleans Parish School Board and state hold all the charter contracts in the city, that doesn’t mean they are the only entities that can shutter a school. Charter schools, run by their own nonprofit boards, can also vote to close themselves, at board meetings that may not be covered by a reporter.
Out of necessity New Orleans reporters have become well versed in interpreting charter school agendas and calling to insist the organizations clarify items to clearly communicate their intentions to parents.
For that reason I’ve learned to show up at schools and speak with parents about charter school agendas they may not have seen. I’ve often been the first person to inform parents their school could be on the chopping block, which is an important and awful thing to do.
Unfortunately, being frontline informers of dismantling is nothing new for Lens reporters. Karen Gadbois founded The Lens in the wake of Katrina, poring over city council agendas and proposed demolition logs.
Only recently, the school district began including charter schools’ renewal year in school profiles made for parents. It’s a high-stakes school year that parents may want to avoid.
DO view school “mergers,” “consolidations,” and “relocations” as closures.
The district and charter groups like to couch closures with terms like “merger,” “consolidation,” and “relocation.” There is often a belief that a school takeover or building change does not represent a school closure. School disruption and closure must be viewed through a similar lens.
In 2016, New Beginnings voted to close one of its schools 24 hours after its CEO floated the idea, shuttering Gentilly Terrace and moving its students to the aforementioned Avery Alexander building.
“We’re not proposing closing a school,” said New Beginnings board member Travis Chase at the time. “We’re proposing moving a school out of an existing building.”
But this is exactly where educational disruption begins.
DO give parents a platform to voice concerns and ask questions they may not be able to ask themselves.
In a traditional district, the board may close a school based on location. But students and staff are more likely to move together to a new school and are likely overseen by the same employer and district.
In New Orleans, closures scatter staff and students across the city and may throw them across town into new charter networks — which function as independent districts — and thus an entirely new curriculum, school culture, school calendar, and family communication system.
In 2015, a school with serious special education issues was shuttered by the state. Despite educational concerns, that didn’t mean parents had an easier time explaining to their kindergartener why his beloved school was closing. I hope this Q&A interview with 5-year-old Anthony’s parents helped other families prepare for such conversations.
It is especially important to elevate the voices of students, parents, and staff members as much as officials and advocates.
DON’T stop covering when the school’s doors close.
I am guilty of turning my attention to other stories myself. It is easier to follow high-profile closures, where public meetings and comments are aplenty, and harder to follow up by tracking down where students and staff end up after their central community breaks apart.
But families deserve follow-ups to ensure the district and school operators’ decisions are serving students and, with enrollment falling across the country, to ensure they are not simply filling seats to meet the bottom line. In a choice district, where families may have sought out arts schools or language immersion programs, how does the district ensure families can continue with these specialities they chose for their child?
While many students in New Orleans end up in higher-rated schools due to the high-stakes nature of closing the poorer performing schools, the effects of frequent closures and relocations are hard to account for in those students’ academic performance.
Additionally, we’ve seen SERIOUS problems with academic record transfers from school to school and between charter networks, some from closures and others from transfers that have literally left students unable to graduate on time. Those systems must be examined.
Families deserve follow-up to ensure the district and school operators’ decisions are serving students.
I am a very proud reporter when I see a parent demand their right to public comment or question their board’s ability to retreat behind closed doors when they haven’t followed the letter of the law.
Witnessing and reporting on closures is hard. It is emotionally draining to watch the pain, sadness, and grief of parents, students, and staff at public meetings with the (almost certainly inevitable) closure vote that will take place — no matter how many people beg for their school to remain open. And to watch the physical draining of the building that will follow over months, as staff must weigh their commitment to students with their responsibility to support their own families and find a new job.
And I know bearing witness does not compare to the pain and trauma of someone who is displaced from their school and community.
Through the emotion, it can be difficult to interrogate officials’ reasoning behind closure. But I must ensure I fully understand their justifications — enrollment, facility condition, specialized programming — so myself and the public can hold them accountable when the next closure is proposed.
Families question why they must be subjects in the ongoing experiment of a high-stakes district and ask why the district doesn’t step in to support schools instead of closing them. In recent years, more board members have begun asking these questions, too.
Bearing witness does not compare to the pain and trauma of someone who is displaced from their school and community.
A couple of years ago, when I was going through some fairly serious medical problems, I really felt like I let the families at Encore Academy down by not being able to be present and cover their closure as in-depth as I had covered closures the decade prior.
That further strengthened my resolve to report seriously and in-depth on closures this school year and focus on community voices as my health improved. And I’m just as concerned as I always have been when district officials delay and obscure school closure decisions like they did again this year with Lafayette Academy.
My charge to elevate student, parent, and staff voices so that they are heard as resoundingly as the voices from official district and charter organizations. It is a great privilege and I embrace it seriously.
Marta Jewson is an education reporter and deputy editor for The Lens, New Orleans’ first nonprofit, nonpartisan public-interest newsroom dedicated to unique investigative and explanatory journalism.
Previously from The Grade’s closing schools series
Covering Chicago’s mass school closing (Chicago Sun-Times’ Lauren FitzPatrick)
The closer (SF Chronicle’s Jill Tucker)
Closings are coming. Cover them well. (Tim Daly)
Covering school closings: Lessons from Colorado (Chalkbeat’s Melanie Asmar)