To inform voters and provide a broad platform for candidate debate, The Lens and our partners at WWNO-FM are presenting conversations with candidates in the Orleans Parish School Board races. Lens reporter Jessica Williams is hosting the events, which are airing on WWNO for the three Sunday nights before the election, at 9 p.m. The […]
Tag: Thomas Robichaux
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Schools
And they're off! OPSB candidates approach the starting gate
Qualifying begins today for candidates seeking seats on the Orleans Parish School Board. At issue are basic questions of governance including whether schools that now answer to the state’s Recovery School District will be returned to local control, making this one of the more pivotal elections in recent memory. Six of the board’s seven incumbents […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Schools
State lifts OPSB financial status; will charters remain wary?
The Orleans Parish School Board has finally escaped a state designation that has stigmatized it for the past eight years. Its financial status is no longer deemed “high-risk,” board president Thomas Robichaux announced Thursday. The state Department of Education first slapped the high-risk label on the School Board in 2004, after the then-bankrupt district was […]
Posted inSchools
School Board put off decision on disadvantaged-business policy
After a heated discussion, the Orleans Parish School Board delayed Tuesday night a decision on modifications to its disadvantaged business enterprise program. The program is intended to help socially or economically disadvantaged businesses to compete in, and obtain, contracts with the School Board. The City of New Orleans has a similar program, as does the […]
Posted inGovernment & Politics, Schools
Interview with OPSB's Thomas Robichaux: Looking beyond school system's past
Thomas Robichaux Thomas Robichaux, 43, a former city attorney who now works as a lawyer for a gaming distribution company, ran in 2008 as a reform candidate for a seat on the Orleans Parish School Board and today is its president. Few dispute that change was sorely needed. For years the city school system had […]