The New Orleans School District is taking strides toward returning to traditional schooling, not just charter education, with its first conventional school opening in five years.
In August, 300 students were welcomed to The Leah Chase School, a new pre-K-8 school named after New Orleans cultural and civil rights icon Leah Chase, as noted by The Hechinger Report. The school serves as a pioneer of sorts as NOLA Public Schools works to launch schools run directly by its district and no longer bear the title of the only all-charter school district in the nation.
The launch of The Leah Chase School represents a beacon of stability for the district that hasn’t directly managed a school since 2019. While charter schools are publicly funded, they are run independently and typically by majority-white state boards, not the majority-Black, locally elected school boards that used to run NOLA schools. Now, The Leah Chase School’s opening is being closely examined to determine how to operate future schools run by the district.
“I think the opening of the Leah Chase School does mark a new period for New Orleans public schools,” said J. Celeste Lay, a political science professor at Tulane University who studies education policy. “I think they are more willing to consider directly running schools in ways we haven’t seen, certainly since Katrina.”
It’s been a struggle in the Orleans Parish School Board, which once committed to only having charter schools in the district, with 75% of its 41,600 students being Black. In the two decades since Hurricane Katrina, NOLA Public Schools grappled with some of the worst student turnouts nationwide.
The eight-month process to launch The Leah Chase School came in response to Lafayette Academy receiving an F rating on the state’s report card. A board meeting was held in January, as Superintendent Avis Williams shared the board and community’s desire to open a district-run school.
“That was just something the community has impressed upon our board members, and they did vote unanimously for us to direct-run the Leah Chase School and for us to direct-run more schools,” Williams said.
Carlos Zervigon, a member of the Orleans Parish School Board, advocated for the opening of The Leah Chase School and saw its launch as a step in the right direction toward restoring traditional schools to the district’s wing.
“There’s a sense that if we’re a system of choice and a system of innovation, one choice should be a school run in a traditional way by the school district directly, with a focus on the neighborhood,” Zervigon said. “That should be one of the choices, and there’s a strong feeling about that.”
Williams notes how “seamless” the first day of school was for Leah Chase’s 300 students, who primarily transferred from Lafayette Academy to the new school, which has full staff, a principal, and a bus transportation system. The smooth start comes despite the school’s call for teachers put out in July.
If The Leah Chase School proves to be successful, it could provide solutions to the NOLA’s 5% drop in school enrollment and the strong possibility of more school closures in the near future. In October, Williams is scheduled to unveil a five-year plan outlining the development of new traditional schools and strategies to address declining enrollment. Meanwhile, board members and the superintendent reaffirm their ongoing support for charter schools.
“They’ll probably operate a couple more, but still fundamentally remain a mostly charter school district,” said Douglas N. Harris, a professor at Tulane University and director of the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice. “I think that partly because a big change can only happen slowly.”
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