Next month, New Orleans voters will decide whether to extend an expiring property tax that finances repairs to public school buildings, but the measure is facing resistance from unlikely people: some members of the Orleans Parish School Board. Indeed, three out of the seven members voted against even sending the question to voters. That’s because the measure takes millions of dollars now controlled by the School Board and puts them in the hands of the Recovery School District, even though the state-run district isn’t mentioned anywhere in the ballot proposition.

As of this academic year, the RSD is out of the business of directly running schools. All the schools under its auspices are now charters, and the national education world’s attention is on how this first-of-its-kind arrangement will work. The Lens is teaming up with The Hechinger Report to report on the intricacies of something that’s called a district but is made up of myriad independent schools.