July 25, 2006
Holy Cross Update...
(note: I'm cross-posting this to my DailyKos diary, so I'm back-tracking a bit in the story...)
A story in the Times-Picayune today focuses on the discussion surrounding the potential sale of land in Kenner owned by the Jefferson Parish School Board to Holy Cross School, the Catholic school for boys (grades 5-12) located in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The school was badly damaged by the storm, and students completed the 2005-06 school year in portable classroom buildings on the campus.
Holy Cross is seeking to leave the 9th Ward. Their board's first overture was to the State of Louisiana, making an offer for the former site of John F. Kennedy High School, a public school located in the city close to Lake Pontchartrain. When that deal fell through (there were issues concerning disposal of hazardous waste on the site), Holy Cross began pursuing a two-track course. The first possible site is that of the former Redeemer-Seton High School, combined with the buildings of St. Frances Cabrini parish. The Archdiocese of New Orleans owns the property, making this sale a private transaction. The second possible location is Kenner tract. Because it's public land, the JP School Board would have to approve the sale, and the members aren't all convinced it's a good idea.
The quest of Holy Cross School to find a new location presents an excellent overview of the status of education, public and private, in metro New Orleans since the storm. Immediately after Katrina, the Orleans Parish Public School system simply ceased to exist. It had no money, no students, and no employees, as most of the city evacuated and had not returned. Almost a year later, the school system exists only as a handful of charter schools operating in Algiers, the New Orleans neighborhood located on the west bank of the Mississippi. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE) has control of most of the public education assets in the city. There is little hope for returning the city's school system to its pre-storm structure, and that's not a bad thing--the OPSS was an unmitigated disaster. What made it so easy for BESE to take over city assets was legislation passed in 2005 enabling the state to take over schools that were performing so badly that there was little hope of improving them while under local control. Public education in the city will continue in populated neighborhoods using the charter-school model.
One of the things that makes education in New Orleans complicated is that Catholic schools in the area are not merely a private option to residents. Catholic schools are an entire parallel school system, and one of the primary contributing factors in the de facto segregation of education in the city. Prior to the storm, there over 120 elementary schools and over 20 high schools in the Catholic Archdiocese of New Orleans. This extensive system enabled white-flight suburbanites as well as whites remaining in the city to avoid sending their kids to school with black children. In spite of the tribulations involved with restoring public education, Catholic schools were back in session in the city in January of 2006.
This is why Holy Cross School is worthy of note. That the school's board of directors is abandoning the 9th Ward is no surprise--the campus took a terrible hit from the storm, and the neighborhood still looks like a war zone. Moving to the Redeemer-Seton site in Gentilly is attractive to the school because it's still in New Orleans, and acquiring the property from the Archdiocese will be easier than deaing with government entities. The site will require a lot of work, however, since it was flooded with over twelve feet of water from the London Avenue Canal.
The Kenner location is attractive to Holy Cross because Jefferson Parish is where the students are. The City of Kenner has already passed a resolution welcoming the school. There's only one boys Catholic high school in Jefferson Parish, Archbishop Rummel High in Metairie. Relocating the school to Kenner would essentially be a continuation of the white-flight that began in the 1960s, accelerated by the storm.
Not everyone in Jefferson Parish shares Kenner's excitement over Holy Cross, particularly the Jefferson Parish School Board. Studies indicate that the parish's population will grow to between 425K-451K, which is a serious increase over the Census Bureau's 411K guesstimate. An additional 40K residents means between potentially 7K-8K new public school students. Several of the board's members are concerned about from where the money to expand their schools to accomodate new students will come, and are hesitant to sell valuable property to a private entity. There is a bit of classic Jefferson Parish political squabbling at work here as well--the board members against or on the fence about the Holy Cross sale are from the west bank; Kenner is on the east bank.
The future of education in metro New Orleans is critical to the rebuilding of the city. Any New Orleans family that had children in Orleans Parish public schools prior to the storm has little to no motivation to return home. Parents would be doing their families such a huge disservice to pull them out of schools that are by far leaps and bounds better than anything in New Orleans. It's going to take several years to determine whether or not the charter schools on the west bank will be a success. That leaves Catholic schools and suburban public schools to carry the bulk of the burden of educating the metro area's children. Both systems must be nurtured and funded to keep the city alive.
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