It’s become an all-too-familiar lament in New Orleans that the charter school system lacks accountability and transparency. Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans (LFNO), where three of my five children are enrolled, has long been caught in a tug-of-war between the administration and the community they’re supposed to serve. 

Recently, this tension reached a breaking point.

Earlier this summer, I was blocked from the school’s Facebook page after calling out school administrators for what I believe to be union-busting tactics — firing several teachers, including the entire English department, and refusing to pay them what they were owed. My criticism was legally protected, but I found myself in the position of having to hire a lawyer to force the school to restore my access to the school’s public Facebook page. Instead of addressing my concerns, school officials decided to silence me. This blatant disregard for the First Amendment is, sadly, just the tip of the iceberg.

The problem isn’t just at LFNO. It’s systemic. 

Charter schools in New Orleans claimed to offer something different: more innovation, more responsiveness, and more accountability. But what we got instead are miniature fiefdoms where leaders make the rules, break them when it suits them, and then act offended when parents like me dare to ask for answers.

Take the most recent LFNO Board of Directors meeting on September 24th. They allowed one of the board members to participate virtually to meet quorum requirements—something that, under state law, should have triggered a whole set of additional transparency measures, none of which were followed. They didn’t provide a way for folks to comment electronically, failed to offer basic participation instructions, and deleted the video recording of the meeting that was supposed to be available for two years. This wasn’t a public meeting — it was a sham.

All of this is happening under the watch of CEO Chase McLaurin, who seems more interested in asserting control than fostering a healthy school community. 

I’ve always believed in addressing people as they wish to be addressed–it’s a matter of basic respect. I call LFNO’s CEO “Dr. McLaurin” because that’s what he’s asked to be called and he’s earned his credentials. But for years, our school addressed staff and teachers using the honorific Madame/Monsieur followed by their first names. Some at the school extended this practice to include him, displeasing Dr. McLaurin, who has now implemented a rigid insistence on formal titles and last names. 

But because Dr. McLaurin does not extend his insistence on respectful forms of address to everyone, it feels more like an attempt to reinforce authority than a genuine push for professionalism. 

Personally, I’m uncomfortable with being addressed using gendered titles. He refuses to offer that same respect to me, though I have made my preference clear to him. It’s petty, it’s cruel, and it’s totally unnecessary.

This disregard for others’ experiences and needs is part of a broader pattern of institutional racism and systemic misogyny that permeates the culture at LFNO. 

Teaching is an overwhelmingly female profession, and women are often the parents who advocate most fiercely for schoolchildren. Yet, at every turn, our concerns are dismissed or ignored. 

Nowhere is this more evident than in the way the administration has handled the teacher unionization effort. More than 80% of the eligible staff voted to join the United Teachers of New Orleans last year. But rather than accepting that decision, the board has done everything it can to avoid negotiating a contract. Meanwhile, board members are unilaterally pushing through changes to salaries and handbooks with zero input from the teachers who educate our kids. 

The message is clear: the administration doesn’t care about the staff’s rights or wellbeing, and they certainly don’t care about maintaining any semblance of transparency or fairness.

The school is now seeing tangible effects of this hostile environment. The lower school principal abruptly left last week, and teachers are leaving in droves. Families like mine are seriously considering pulling our children out because LFNO has abandoned the immersion curriculum we signed up for. In its place is a test-centered approach that prioritizes Dr. McLaurin’s bonus over what’s best for our kids. 

We didn’t sign up for a school that’s focused on making sure our kids test well. We signed up for a place that valued holistic education, where kids were immersed in language and culture, not standardized test prep.

Parents and students showed up at the most recent board meeting to talk about the school’s restrictions on bathroom use, which have led to kids wetting themselves, getting urinary tract infections, and even bleeding through their clothes because they couldn’t tend to their menstrual needs. 

One parent, a Black woman, explained that she wasn’t allowed to bring her kindergartener back into the school to use the restroom at dismissal—after her child had already wet herself twice on car rides home because she wasn’t allowed to go during the day. Yet, moments later, two white parents were let in without question. 

The administration’s response? They denied the policy even existed, and when parents insisted it was a real issue, they were told to take it up somewhere else. 

Then, in a truly bizarre turn, Dr. McLaurin used a recent school shooting in Georgia as a justification for this ridiculous policy. He literally told a room full of shocked parents, “There was a shooting in Georgia a week ago. You know where that kid wanted to go? The bathroom.” 

As if denying children basic bodily needs is a solution to violence in schools.

This isn’t just about LFNO. This is what happens when people in charge of charter schools don’t have to answer to anyone but themselves. 

The whole charter system needs to change. We need real oversight. We need boards that actually listen to the communities they serve. And we need leaders who care more about our kids than about their own egos and bottom lines.

I want LFNO to succeed. I want my children to thrive here. I want all Louisiana schools to succeed too, so that everyone’s children can thrive.

But I’m not willing to wait around and hope things get better on their own. We need change, and we need it now. Our kids, at LFNO and across the state, deserve better. And we as parents have the right to demand it.

Sarah Stickney Murphy has five children, three of whom are students at Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans. The proud product of unionized pre-Katrina Orleans Parish public schools, she holds a bachelor’s degree in music and an MBA from Loyola University of New Orleans. Currently, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Justice Studies while serving as an adjunct instructor at the University of New Orleans, where her research focuses on labor organizing and the intersections of race, class, and gender in the cultural economy of New Orleans. For the last two decades, she has worked in fund development, to help build the capacity of Black and Brown-led racial equity-focused nonprofit organizations.