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Spotlight on Simmons

Professor Advocates for New Orleans Public Schools, Post-Katrina

Theresa Perry is a professor in the departments of Africana studies and education at Simmons, and a member of the National Coalition for Quality Education in New Orleans (NCQENO), an hoc group of scholars and educators helping local people create high-quality public schools in post-Katrina New Orleans for all children, especially those traditionally underserved. (All New Orleans photos by Alejandro Salinas)

It's been one year since Hurricane Katrina. What do you see as the most obvious changes to public education since that event?
The most dramatic change has been the dismantling of public education, as we know it. Before Katrina, New Orleans had a public education system with 117 public schools and a handful of charters; now it has a collection of charter schools (15 and rising, as of June 1), and only four regular public schools under the jurisdiction of the New Orleans superintendent.

How did this happen?
Prior to Katrina, 93 of the 117 schools met their annual state accountability standards. After Katrina, the state legislature created more stringent accountability standards that applied only to New Orleans - authorizing the state to take over, and place in a recovery district, 102 of those 117 schools. The state further stipulated that the schools could only be opened as charter schools, and the federal government provided monetary incentives to make this happen.

What does this mean for the future of New Orleans education?
New Orleans was one of few cities in the country that had a significant black teaching force. Of its 5,000 teachers, an estimated 80% were African American. After being fired, more than half of them have retired in order to maintain some income. They are being replaced by a largely inexperienced teaching force from out of state, who receive low salaries and limited insurance benefits.

We have seen the erosion of the conditions of teacher work, the decimation of an experienced teaching force, the introduction of discretion in the setting of teacher salaries, and the elimination from children's lives of a network of adult caregivers who lived in their communities. We have witnessed the elimination of the local control of public education in the city of New Orleans and an attack on one of the few collective bargaining units - United Teachers of New Orleans - below the Mason-Dixon. There continues to be an over-reliance on outside experts and the corresponding failure to significantly engage and take seriously the opinions of the local African-American community: residents, community and religious leaders, elected officials, and educational experts.

The state of Louisiana used Katrina as an opportunity to remake public education, not taking into consideration how these actions would affect an already traumatized people.

How does all this affect the school children?
You would think that in the aftermath of such a tragedy, an effort would be made to keep the teachers in the community working with these youth. They know the children; these teachers have been part of their support network and have helped to stabilize their communities. These teachers know the cultural context and mores of New Orleans youth and their families.

High schools students have told NCQENO members that they have no one to talk to, and that they wish their old teachers were around. There has been no systematic attempt to address the psychological needs of children or their caregivers. The high school students are aware that their teachers are doing the best they can, but that the resources just aren't there. Some students are particularly sad about Fortier High School (previously a black high school) being handed over to Tulane University for use as a 7-12 charter school primarily for the children of Tulane employees. According to community organizers, thousands of students were out of school in the spring 2006 semester, as the state refused to allow the district to open up schools. Even now, we have heard from organizers that the number of schools scheduled to open in September 2006 are not sufficient to accommodate the children currently living in the uptown section of the city.

When was the last time you were in New Orleans? What images from the trip made the deepest impression on you?
I was there June 21-22, for an education summit that NCQENO assisted in organizing. I heard the voices and observed the actions of a neglected, resilient, and resistant people. The young and old were gutting their homes. Women from a Baton Rouge trailer community traveled to the summit to ask for assistance with educational programs they had organized for young children. A couple who had spent the better part of their lives advocating for services for their two autistic children are now advocating for the rights of special education children in the new, virtually all-charter district. High school student leaders have chronicled their lives since Katrina, and their essays are being published in the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill High School Journal.

If there were two New Orleans before Katrina, it is even more so today. The lights are on, utilities are running, and stores are open in the French Quarter and upper-income areas in the city. Not so in most areas of town where poor, working-class, and middle-income black and white people lived. There are still abandoned cars, debris strewn everywhere, and many neighborhoods still in darkness. But in spite of this darkness and debris, a people are determined to take control of their schools, rebuild their houses, care for their children, rebuild their cultural institutions, and reclaim New Orleans.

What lessons can be learned from Katrina?
I think that Brenda Mitchell, president of the United Teachers of New Orleans, said it best in an interview I did with her in February for the Harvard African American Policy Journal: "You don't rush to redesign a system, excluding the very people from the table who are impacted by it the most. And that includes parents. And it includes teachers and school support staff. I think that we had an opportunity, and we've missed it. And we could have sat down and crafted a plan that would work for all of us."

That's what NCQENO is trying to do now: to help communities define and develop their own educational institutions, involving local people as equal partners in this process.