Schools still not open in New Orleans

Posted by R. Neal

Apparently, there are still no schools open in Orleans Parish:

When devastated St. Bernard Parish opened its first district school in a collection of trailers on Monday, New Orleans became the only public school system in the region that has not opened any of its campuses since Hurricane Katrina -- even though several schools in Algiers and Uptown were left undamaged.

While some parents and community leaders have called that reality nothing short of disgraceful, branding it a roadblock to the city's repopulation, the district's chief operating officer said Orleans Parish faces problems St. Bernard does not have.

As usual with education, one of the problems is money:

Before Katrina, he had warned the district it was on the brink of running "out of money" if it did not pass a $50 million bond issue before September. Although the School Board and the state bond commission approved the bonds, Roberti was unable to sell them because the tax revenue backing those bonds has all but disappeared.

Meanwhile, the district has applied for $100 million in community disaster loans from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It still has a host of other financial obligations that will make any openings tricky -- but not impossible.

Oh, and politics:

Although money has been a concern and many schools were severely damaged, politics and fighting have also been a stumbling block, he said.

"We have to keep fighting lawsuits; we have to keep fighting politicians," Fahrenholtz said. "We have some board members who have been on both sides of every issue, and that has slowed things down."

For example:

Nonetheless, Roberti said, the district probably could have opened some schools this week if not for a series of events that included chartering schools on the West Bank, a court order that stalled that effort, and a competing plan that, until the order expired, had the district trying to open some of those same schools on its own.

[..]

By early October, the district's plan was to open up to eight undamaged schools on the West Bank in November. "We put contracts on the street and they were ready," Roberti said, referring to transportation and food-service vendors.

But at the same meeting where Roberti and staff from Alvarez & Marsal laid out that plan, board Vice President Lourdes Moran proposed a competing plan to charter those schools, and it passed.

"That changed the landscape," Roberti said.

Although Moran originally planned to open those charters this month, an Algiers minister and other community leaders suggested the plan lacked enough public input and won a court order that stalled the charters. The proposed charters were originally scheduled to go up for state approval Oct. 20, but the court order prevented any action until last week, when they got a nod from the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education.

This all seems a little crazy. Families aren't going to move back to their neighborhoods, even if they still exist and their homes can be repaired, if there aren't any schools for their children to attend.