The employee who supervised the last five traditional public schools in the city just quit her job to become CEO of ExCEED, a group that wants to turn them into charters. Four of the people who used to work for her, and still work for the district, are named in its application.
Donald Pate, who was on the the board for Lake Forest charter school, said he wanted to help out the school by selling dirt for a construction project. That would violate state ethics law. Although he said his company got $120,000, the state Ethics Board cleared him.
International High School and Lusher Charter School argued labor-relations law didn’t apply to them.
ExCEED Network is new, but it has the support of the school principals. InspireNOLA has three other schools.
A new charter organization called the ExCEED Network has filed applications to take control of the schools. The Orleans Parish superintendent has advocated transforming the schools and has spoken at meetings held by the founding principals of the charter network.
The new Exceed Network has the same name that school system staffers use for five remaining schools.
“If you decentralize an entire district, there’s a loss in economies of scale,” says researcher Christian Buerger.
They want to install a fence to prevent anyone from walking from a fire escape to the edge of the roof.
A state investigation found that ReNEW had inflated how much extra attention it would provide certain students, and then didn’t provide the extra help to students who needed it. The state made the charter network find those students and provide the help now.
Such transfers couldn’t be tracked easily before.
