As the doors of John McDonogh Senior High School closed last week, community members, neighbors and former students were left with the unanswered question: Who will run the school when it reopens?

A former school administrator is circulating a petition that calls for the return of the school to Orleans Parish School Board control. So far about 235 people have signed it.

In the meantime, a group of neighborhood activists is trying to influence how the school is run when it reopens after renovations in the 2016-17 school year.

They’ll hold a community meeting today at 5:30 p.m. at the Community Book Center, 2523 Bayou Rd.* The Lens will live-blog the meeting below.

“Neither the Recovery School District, the Orleans Parish School Board nor the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education seems to have a plan for the building or the school, at least not one they are sharing with concerned parents, students, alumni and community members,” said Ann Marie Coviello in an email announcing the meeting.

Renovations at John Mac were supposed to begin in 2016, but the Recovery School District announced in January that it would close the school next year to accelerate the project.

If all goes as planned, the construction project could be open for bid as soon as June of next year, said Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard at a recent state Board of Education and Secondary Education committee meeting.

Dobard indicated that the school will remain under the authority of the Recovery School District when it reopens. But he said he doesn’t know which charter operator would govern it — or whether it would exclusively house a high school. He’s said before that Future Is Now, the prior operator, would not be eligible to run it again.

“We still have to make a decision about what the school will look like,” Dobard said at the  the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education’s administration and finance meeting on June 17. He added that there are still too many high schools in New Orleans.

At the same meeting, John Mac community members pleaded with the board to remove the school from the Recovery School District’s oversight and hand it over to the Orleans Parish School Board.

“Give us an opportunity to have a say-so in John McDonogh,” said Frank Buckley,  a teacher and founder of a community group called C6 — Conscious Concerned Citizens Controlling Community Changes. “We ask that no other work be done — that you put a chain on the door — until we’re at the table.”

Buckley was behind a petition in April 2013 that sought to oust Future Is Now Schools. He has long complained that the community is not involved in decisions about the troubled school — an opinion he reiterated at the committee meeting.

Community members at other schools have tried to move to the OPSB when they were unhappy with RSD’s decisions, such as the merger of Landry and Walker high schools.

At that committee meeting, BESE member Carolyn Hill attempted to make a motion to allow John McDonogh to return to the OPSB. But committee chairman Jay Guillot said the matter would instead be addressed at a future BESE meeting.

The next day, at a full BESE board meeting, Hill asked that the board consider “the process for selecting the future governing authority for John McDonogh High School, including the Orleans Parish School Board.” It was added to the agenda for the August meeting of the board’s administration and finance committee.

Her request was met with resistance from other BESE board members.

“The fact that we’re already starting to determine what the school’s path is makes me exceptionally uncomfortable,” said BESE member Kira Orange Jones.

She said the Orleans Parish School Board still has no permanent superintendent.  “This is a district that’s still in a lot of instability currently and has a long way to go.”

Live blog, 5:30 p.m. Wednesday

*Correction: This story originally provided an incorrect address for Community Book Center. (July 2, 2014)