“What it has gotten to is the fact that if [policymakers] close down all of the high schools and your children have nowhere to go to school, then you’ll leave. They’ve tried everything that they can to get people out [of the city].” – Bywater resident reflecting on the possible closure of Frederick Douglass High School by the Recovery School District and the facility master planners (Buras, 2015, p. 144).

Image – Educationnext.org

Before Hurricane Katrina hit in August 2005, New Orleans’ 124 public schools were already opened (Dreilinger, 2019). The majority of these schools were under the Orleans Public School Board the others were either controlled by the Recovery School District or under a charter school management organization (Dreilinger, 2019). Established prior to the Hurricane, the

Recovery School District was created by the state to assess and address Louisiana’s failing schools (Buras, 2015, p. 145).

After Hurricane Katrina, the majority of the public schools went from the OPSB to the RSD; shortly thereafter, the schools went to the Charter Management Organizations (Dixson, 2015, p. 290). In fact, 72 out of 90 public schools in New Orleans had become charter schools by the 2012-2013 school-year (Dixson, 2015, p. 290). 84% of New Orleans students attended the charter schools (Dixson, 2015, p. 290).

The rapid transition from public schools to charter schools in New Orleans had “racial implications” (Dixson, 2015, p. 289). 7,500 employees in the OPSB district, which was made up of mostly black “teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals,” were fired upon the arrival of

“young and predominantly white transplants from education reform organizations like Teach for America, New Leaders for New Schools, and the New Teacher Project” (Dixson, 2015, p. 289).

The fashion in which the transition occurred is problematic. Black educators, students, and community members are experiencing a white-washing of their schools (Dixson, 2015, p. 289). The transition could be viewed as “premised on white supremacist notions” which suggest that blacks are “unfit…to teach black children” (Dixson, 2015, p. 289). The employee demographics and teaching styles in the charter schools, aren’t representative of the majority of students in

the district, making a possibly incompatible learning environment (Dixson, 2015, p. 289).

(Video – Information on the young teachers from Teach for America being placed into the New Orleans schools – Pros/Cons – LearningMatters)