The Algiers Charter Schools Association board is poised to vote tomorrow on whether or not to recommend three schools return to Orleans Parish School Board control. Dwight D. Eisenhower Academy, Martin Behrman Elementary School and O. Perry Walker Senior High School are each eligible to leave the Recovery School District due to their students’ improved performance on the state’s standardized tests.

For months, officials have described the planned merger between West Bank rivals O. Perry Walker and L.B. Landry high schools as a “unification.”

The new school could have an ecumenical new name: “Landry Walker High School,” planners said.

More than 100 L.B. Landry and O. Perry Walker students, alumni, and parents met with representatives of the Algiers Charter School Association again Wednesday night to discuss a potential plan for a merger of the two West Bank high schools.

A committee tasked with crafting the fall 2013 merger of two Algiers neighborhood high schools faced heated opposition from both school communities again Saturday during a public forum held to lay out a unification plan for O. Perry Walker and L.B. Landry high schools.

Let us go and leave us alone. That was the message employees and parents from O.

By Della Hasselle, Lens Charter School Reporter |

The Algiers Charter School Association cancelled a board meeting scheduled for Thursday, Oct. 25th at 6 p.m., hours before the meeting was supposed to occur.

Algiers Charter Schools Association interim CEO Adrian Morgan presented a plan for improved communication, collaboration, and coordination at the association’s board meeting Thursday night at Algiers Technology Academy. Morgan, who has been on the job for only 14 days, pointed to meetings with community groups, parents, and staff as a key to overcoming the strained relationships the charter organization has faced in recent months.

The Algiers Charter Schools Association met Monday night in the O. Perry Walker library to publicly review finances for the 2012-2013 school year. Finance director Charlie Mackles led a short presentation on each school’s proposed budget.

Despite $5.7 million less in federal funding, the Algiers Charter School Association forecasts a budget surplus for the 2012-13 school year, in contrast to its $1.3 million budget deficit in 2011-12. Most of the decline in federal revenues stems from diminished Title 1 funding and an expired Teacher Incentive Grant.

View the budget numbers in this .pdf spreadsheet.

Revenues decrease in the coming year for the Algiers Charter School Association, due mainly to expiration of a Teacher Incentive Grant and reduction in the size of Title 1 money.  

That’s the salient news from the budget for the upcoming school year released Thursday night.

As the Algiers Charter School Association board met behind closed doors Thursday night, a crowd of parents, teachers, and students gathered to protest controversial staffing changes. Some in the crowd at the school association’s central office were  protesting the fate of O. Perry Walker principal Mary Laurie, who faces  transfer to the failing Algiers Technical Academy.

The first round of cuts has surfaced from the Algiers Charter School Association’s bid to improve student performance by terminating and moving around principals, and so far, it’s not only principals who’ve been targeted. At least one termination, at Edna Karr High School, is in violation of the Orleans Parish School Board’s contract with the charter school group, School Board officials say.

Algiers Charter Schools Association’s board has approved Stuart Gay, the association’s chief financial officer, to serve as interim chief executive officer of the charter management organization, succeeding Andrea Thomas-Reynolds who did not seek to renew her contract. The board’s action, at its May 23 monthly meeting, was greeted with applause from the audience.

The state Department of Education today released the list of New Orleans schools eligible to participate in its voucher program. The program, called the Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program, has for the past three years offered low-income students from low-performing public schools the chance to attend the private school of their choice, with the state paying the bill for tuition and fees.

Just outside the gates of the navy base that was formerly a pillar of the Algiers neighborhood, teachers wonder what their future might be in a rapidly changing school system. The Algiers Charter School Association, which now runs eight schools in the community, is looking to cut 30 positions to keep a balanced budget and could end participation in the state retirement system, starting next fall.

Click the following link to review the agenda for tomorrow’s meeting at Martin Behrman Academy: ACSA Regular Board Agenda 10-27-2011A

Review it at the following link: ACSA Board Agenda 9-29-2011final.