Council condemns mayor’s threat to scuttle $20 million settlement with Orleans Parish School Board
OPSB had sued because the city was skimming a portion off of the top of its OPSB tax payments; district officials agreed to settle last year, when the School Board realized it was facing a $36 million deficit.
Recent Posts
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Super Bowl planners: ‘Anticipate any features of the [Lower 9] neighborhood which could be used by media to substantiate Katrina narrative’
This is the introduction to a five-story project, The Lens’ Embracing Katrina Narratives project. Last summer, in July, a group of influential New Orleanians gathered, with hopes of preparing the city for a national spotlight ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Michael Hecht, the CEO Of Greater New Orleans Inc., who was tapped by Governor Jeff Landry…
Though she was an infant when Katrina hit, she still feels its effects today
Her family house has framed her world. With its doorway, marked with penciled hash marks to show her height over the years, the house tracked her growth at the same time she tracked its years of repairs after Katrina.
Thwarted from connecting the Lower 9 to its wetland roots
After Katrina, environmentalists built an overlook on Bayou Bienvenue to give the community access to the wetlands, which had been devastated by salt water from a now-closed canal called MR-GO. Recent construction threatens that key post-Katrina achievement, Arthur Johnson says.
She saw ‘a public-health crisis’ and opened a clinic in the emptied Lower 9
“Alice saved my life,” neighbors say. In 2007, Alice Craft-Kerney helped to launch a post-Katrina clinic that was invaluable to neighbors. But it closed its doors after an inexplicably short time.
Planting a flag in the Lower 9 ‘wilderness’
Every year on August 29 – the day that Katrina hit, in 2005 – Green’s family gathers by the place where his mom’s house once stood, in shirts that read “Roof Riders.” Then they walk the two-block route taken by the floating house, to the oak tree where it stopped.
Embracing Katrina narratives
After an insinuation made by a Super Bowl planning committee, reporters from The Lens asked Lower 9 residents what Super Bowl visitors should see, plotted the points on a map, and documented the Katrina narratives that go with each landmark.
opinion
Making the grade – or not.
What Louisiana’s school letter grades don’t tell us about school quality. Despite our F grade, the students at Noble Minds are not failing, and we are not failing our students.
Ensuring we all feel safe and are stably employed
“We have much work to do,” Hunter writes, “to ensure that an anti-terrorist component is part of the planning process for every special event that attracts thousands – Mardi Gras, festivals and holiday celebrations, even our Sunday second-line parades.”
‘Servitude’
The author, who is also associate editor for the Angolite magazine, won an honorable mention for this essay in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.
Oil and gaffe
Prominent oil-backed politicians claim that fossil fuels support Louisiana’s economy and that community activists are the problem. The facts say otherwise.
PODCAST
Behind The Lens episode 263: ‘They never paid’
Nick Chrastil and Katy Reckdahl on a temporary shelter Gov. Jeff Landry opened in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl and local concerns about the process. Delaney Dryfoos on The Descendants Project’s lawsuit against agencies they allege violated the state constitution in giving Greenfield LLC tax breaks.
About the Lens
The Lens aims to engage and empower the residents of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. We provide the information and analysis necessary to advocate for more accountable and just governance.