We knew it. We said it way back when then-state Superintendent Paul Vallas unveiled is smoke and mirrors plan that outlined the return of RSD-controlled schools to the Orleans Parish School Board that it was all a bunch bull. Stories in the local mainstream paper about a handful of RSD schools that are primed for return to the OPSB were again nothing but a trick to muddy the narrative surrounding the state of education in our city and state.
Three schools that could have been returned to the OPSB were denied that right by the so-called “community” board that govern them. At those schools—O. Perry Walker, Martin Behrman, and Dwight D. Eisenhower—it has been reported that a vast majority of people within those communities (parents, teachers, students) wanted to return to the OPSB, but the board that governs the schools, the Algiers Charter School Association, whose membership is not elected to and by extension, not beholden to the people of the community they supposedly serve, said no.
And this is exactly what we anticipated. The five members (out of seven) who voted against returning to real local control can provide all of the excuses for their decisions that they can fashion—concerns about charter school autonomy and school funding under the OPSB and so on. The bottom line is that these individuals are hard pressed to relinquish the power and control that has been handed to them to the people from whom it was stolen.
