An apparent influx of corporate money could skew the upcoming election for candidates running for the Orleans Parish School Board, popularly known as OPSB. 

As the New Orleans Advocate reported last week, pro-charter donor Education Reform Now Advocacy Committee spent $208,000 on candidates KaTrina Chantelle Griffin and Chan Tucker, who are running against Donaldo Batiste and Eric “Doc” Jones, who support district-run schools.

A glimpse at Tucker’s contributions reveals a $2,500 donation from Leslie Jacobs, who is often portrayed as the architect of the 2005 takeover, with another $2,500 from her husband Scott Jacobs. I’m told that Jacobs is leading efforts, directly or indirectly, to limit schools that are run by the district, not by charter operators. Even if that is incorrect, the corporate money backing of these candidates certainly follows the all-or-nothing philosophy of the all-charter system that Jacobs helped to create after Hurricane Katrina.

I’ve now studied the city’s educational system for four decades — since long before 2005, when the state turned over all public schools to charter operators. I do not believe that the charter reforms have benefitted the city of New Orleans, judging from what I’ve seen.

It appears to me that a major reason for the influx of corporate funding in this election is fear among many charter school leaders — CEO’s, school principals (heads of schools), and state advocacy groups  — that the OPSB will assume control of more than the one, single school under its local control, the newly-established Leah Chase School.

To understand my conclusion, it’s useful to look at an event that appears, on face value, to have nothing to do with the upcoming OPSB election.

Savings accounts inextricably linked to ed reformers

There is a seeming disconnect between Tuesday’s ballot of OPSB candidates and  a panel discussion about education “savings accounts,” held last spring at the Jewish Community Center.

They are, indeed, inextricably connected; and they demonstrate how the 2005 charter school movement, which became an unprecedented takeover, as Orleans Parish became a district with approximately 99% charters, also known as “schools of choice.” At the same time, the political charter-school movement potentially sits at the precipice of failure with a city overwhelmed by D and F schools, because there are simply not enough quality schools to meet market demand. This has always been the case.

Given the poor academic achievement levels in the city and state, it’s clear that nearly 20 years later, the  charter-school mantra — “leave no student behind because of their ZIP code” — has not yet succeeded.  

At last spring’s town-hall-style meeting at the JCC, a moderator assumed control of vetting the questions to two well-known education proponents, state senator Ann Duplessis, who authored the state’s first private-school voucher bill in 2008. and Caroline Roemer, executive director of the Louisiana Association of Charter Schools. The moderator asked them both to describe the “savings accounts,” a proposed statewide bank of sorts for education. 

At the time, the $300 million bill creating the savings accounts had already cleared committee and was expected to arrive in the full chamber of the legislature after a likely $300 million budget reallocation of state taxpayer dollars. There was no question that once passed, Gov. Jeff Landry would sign the proposed legislation and the final, compromised budget. On June 19, he did just that.

The two panelists were picked because each had a different take on the legislation. Or so we were told. The chairperson of the community meetings committee for the JCC had billed the two-hour panel as a back-and-forth discussion on education from two distinct points of view. 

Yet both panelists approved of the proposal to rob Peter of $300 million from state funds to pay Paul’s parochial and private schools — thus helping finance parents’ abilities to send their children to admittedly better schools. The concept, when tried elsewhere, has left giant gaps in state budgets and has not improved overall school performance. Yet, judging from the JCC forum, these two prominent education proponents are largely in favor of it.

The savings-account legislation is embedded within the broader narrative of school choice, an ideology endorsed by both panelists and universally accepted among most public school families and New Orleans citizens — at least during its early stages in 2005-2006,  immediately following Katrina.

Roemer, who could be described as the senior field general of the politically successful charter school movement, favored the savings accounts with a mere reservation that, to this writer, was solely technical in nature — she is concerned that public funds could be shifting to private and parochial schools, she said. 

In Roemer’s world view, expressed at the JCC, both she and Duplessis are unsatisfied with the weak public education market and state accountability standards (Bulletin 111, The Louisiana School, District, and State Accountability System, La.) that eventually led to a public school system where multiple public schools were not sufficiently successful, and apparently not sufficiently accountable. 

Viewing education as public good

The incessant, obsessive drive to further school choice apparently will never cease. In this writer’s judgment, they never will, because the ethos within the leaders of the choice movement does not fundamentally believe in public education in the sense of Horace Mann — its potential value to serve the common good. 

Rather, charter school power brokers, like the vast numbers of Neo-liberals in the city and the state, do not view public education as a public good, whose aim extends beyond high test scores. 

Over the past 20 years, we’ve witnessed charter schools used as pawns on the chessboard of economic markets, to be shuffled around, then eventually closed when the metrics of student achievement are not achieved.

Yet it has become increasingly more difficult to find open seats at high-quality schools, leaving the very few elite, high-performing charter schools, which couldn’t be more ironic.  

Rather than perpetually dismantling “low-performing schools,” to re-license yet another untested new charter, why not reinvest in the lower-performing public charter schools by recruiting and hiring, with a better pay scale to hire more quality teachers? 

And while at it, what’s wrong with enhancing the civic virtue of public schools to advance civility and broad knowledge in a painfully divided country at war with itself, with much of its perpetually citizenry engaged in vitriol anger over the culture wars?  

So, here’s the rub: Amid questioning from parents who cannot find good schools to enroll in, school-choice advocates need to find more and more avenues to advance their mantra, to hold on to it. The widespread belief in the success of the all-charter charter district in the city is becoming more and more difficult to sustain, especially among low-to-middle income minority families. 

That hope still purportedly exists, potentially, nationwide, among the likes of former Secretary of Education Arnie Duncan. But, in my opinion, it has largely faded in New Orleans.

Corporate money drives school reform

Now, in the upcoming OPSB elections, we have corporate dollars supporting charter school candidates, if not the continuation of the all-charter school district in New Orleans. 

Though the connection between the story of the JCC panel on proposed education savings account and the election for candidates to the OPSB, on the surface appear disconnected, the opposite is true: I believe that advocates of school choice, whether public or private will stop at nothing to expand their span of power, and control over the use of public funds, under the ideologically brilliant mantra: freedom to choose schools for all families. 

Despite the chanting of the charter mantra, despite the optimism and promise, their establishment of a “system of charter schools,” rather than a centralized system of schools, simply hasn’t added up. The “system” is failing for one simple reason: there are not enough quality schools to go around. 

Yet in today’s OPSB elections, the reformers’ goal is to tightly hold on to power, all because OPSB managed to take back one sole public school, The Leah Chase School. 

Yet, given the contributions bestowed on some OPSB candidates in today’s elections, the powerful charter school movement is apparently threatened by the miniscule takeover of Leah Chase. Some might argue that they are trying to keep their grip on the all-charter system while also looking beyond it, to the newly passed state voucher program, which also seems guaranteed to fail the children of New Orleans. 

The opinions expressed here are strictly the author’s, not that the University of Holy Cross or any organization. Luis Mirón, PhD, is a distinguished visiting professor of social sciences at University of Holy Cross. A former dean of the College of Social Sciences at Loyola University New Orleans and director of the Institute for Quality and Equity in Education, Mirón has devoted his life to education, policy work and issues of equity.