With the opening of The Leah Chase School – the first district-managed public school in almost two decades – just a few months ago, this year’s Orleans Parish School Board election has reignited questions about the direction of the New Orleans school system. 

Elections for the Orleans Parish School Board took place on Nov. 5 and resulted in no winner for the second district seat. None of the candidates – Eric “Doc” Jones, Gabriela Biro and Chan Tucker – secured a majority vote, resulting in the two front-runners, Jones and Biro, seeking election in a runoff on Dec. 7.  

KaTrina Chantelle Griffin and incumbent Donaldo Batiste vied for the 4th District seat. Griffin unseated Batiste, a board member since 2022, with 60% of the vote.  

Pro-charter organization Democrats for Education Reform spent $208,000 endorsing Griffin and Tucker, out-fundraising candidates supporting the return of district-run schools and shifting the election’s focus to a debate over charter school versus traditional school governance.  

Batiste critiques the influence of outside funding that promotes charter schools over direct-run schools. According to him, charter school organizations put money into the election to avoid the district taking back more schools.  

“They wanted to do their will, their way, and they have been successful in purchasing their legislators. They have purchased their bestie board members. They have purchased their school board members,” Batiste said. “Money speaks.” 

The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina resulted in the transition to a 100% charter school system. “It has been working. The test scores are up… the school site finances have been better and we’ve been able to manage our facilities. Things across the board are better,” 6th District school board member Carlos Zervigón said.  

While Zervigón rejects a one-size-fits-all solution to school governance, he acknowledges the concerns of charter schools’ predominance in the city. 
 

For New Orleans, the charter school shift after Katrina meant that the predominantly Black community and school system was transferred from the hands of local representatives into the hands of outside entities.  

“All these young, mostly white, college-educated, Teach for America people with no connection to the community and almost no teacher training were brought in to be the new teaching core. They struggled. They weren’t prepared. They don’t understand the community they were serving,” Zervigón said. “Now we want our schools back. We want control of our own institutions.” 

Jones agrees that, while the school system should not be exclusively charter-run or direct-run, more direct-run schools are feasible.  

“If the schools are not doing well, then the next step is to create an avenue that may be successful for these schools to perform,” Jones said.  

Both Jones and Batiste believe that the public school board should oversee more direct-run schools to diversify the school system.  

“The one thing I believe that we haven’t done properly is work together with all of the organizational structures that can have a vital input in making sure that a district is a municipality representation,” Jones said.  

However, the district’s readiness to manage more schools is still in question.  

Jones says that for the district to run schools, they need a vision, and he has not yet seen a tangible plan for the near future.  

“It shouldn’t be the idea that we want to close all charter schools and make them all direct-run schools,” Jones said. “They’re not ready to run a whole hundred percent of schools because they don’t have the personnel or the resources to do it.” 

Charter proponents also argue that the district’s miscalculation of tax revenue projections by about $20 million, resulting in a loss of $600 per student, hampers the pro-direct-run argument.  

“I get that it doesn’t help the argument that we need to direct-run everything when we are having mistakes at the central office that could be consequential. It ought to give people on that side [pro-charter] pause,” Zervigón said. “We’ve got to get our act together.” 

Coexistence between charter and direct-run schools is a common envisionment for Orleans Parish School Board members, and accountability is a main concern for Zervigón and Batiste. 

“I want the same accountability standards for our traditionally run school, which is The Leah Chase School, to be no different than the accountability measures that are in place for other traditionally run schools,” Batiste said. “I don’t believe The Leah Chase’s direct-run school should be operated by the same expectations that the charter schools have because they [charters] have more autonomy and more flexibility.” 

Conversely, Zervigón says that charter and direct-run schools should be held accountable in the same manner.  

“If school performance suffers… we must take action. We will not sit around and just let it happen,” Zervigón said. “We need a way to hold ourselves accountable. We need to be sure that we treat the schools that are direct-run the same as charter schools. They’re all our public school students.”