Cowen Institute’s Response to RSD’s New Plan

On Tuesday, September 6^th, Recovery School District (RSD) Superintendent John White released the district’s new strategic plan entitled What Will It Take? The event was held at Loyola University with around 200 people in attendance. Superintendent White walked through the plan, discussing all twelve commitments with a PowerPoint presentation.

The Cowen Institute supports the RSD’s concerted effort to incorporate community concerns into their plan. We are excited to see how the new RSD commitments to New Orleans are implemented. Below we highlight the commitments we especially like and those that we are concerned about.

What we like:

Commitment One recognizes the poor performance of the RSD’s direct-run schools and promises to create a network of school support teams whose priority will be to improve student achievement. We are happy to see the RSD’s commitment to put more resources into their direct-run schools,

Commitment Five promises that the RSD will issue an annual Equity Report. This report has the potential be an important document, offering increased transparency in the areas of individual school performance, progress, admissions processes, and student attendance and retention. We hope all schools will cooperate with the RSD on the report and provide all the necessary data and information.

Commitment Six has the RSD creating a city-wide enrollment system that will give parents one process through which they can apply to all schools under the RSD. This system would also be able to match parents’ and students’ preferences with available slots. Other school districts that have implemented similar systems have increased the number of students who are assigned to one of their top choices. However, the system proposed by the RSD does not include schools under the Orleans Parish School Board. We would like to see RSD and OPSB work together to create a comprehensive city-wide enrollment system, so parents have one place where they can submit applications for every school in New Orleans.

Commitment Eight highlights the RSD’s efforts to make things easier for parents and to get parents more involved in their children’s education. The district has created four satellite offices called “Parent Family Centers” to give parents and guardians a place to go if they have questions or if they need to enroll their child. The district is also working to facilitate parent-community discussions, hiring translators, starting a hotline, continuing the Student Task Force, and starting a Facebook page to expedite the flow of information between the RSD and the community.

Commitment Nine has the RSD making a concerted effort to incorporate public input and to be more transparent about many important decisions, such as school closure or transformation and school facility assignments. In the past the Cowen Institute has expressed concerns over the lack of transparency and public input for these types of decisions.

What we are concerned about:

Commitment Three sets clear and rigid accountability standards for direct-run and charter schools, which is an important step in improving school performance, and states that direct-run schools with a school performance score (SPS) of 75 or higher will be invited to submit a charter application. Transitioning from a direct-run school to a charter school is a major change; we hope the RSD will provide a substantial level of support for such transitions.  We would also point out that the return policy adopted by BESE last December allows direct-run schools with an SPS of 80 or higher to decide to return to the local school district. Also, this commitment does not address how RSD will handle high performing schools that do not wish to become charters.

Commitment Eleven pledges that the School Facilities Master Plan (SFMP) will serve “all” New Orleans public school children in a “new or refurbished” facility but provides no details about how the RSD will keep the commitment. As it stands now, the SFMP has funding for Phase One and Two only, falling $422 million short for Phase Three. This means the 13,200 children whose schools would be built or refurbished under Phase Three will be left in schools with significant deficiencies. The commitment does mention that the RSD will explore “creative use of funds”, which probably refers to state and federal tax incentives and credits, such as New Markets Tax Credits and Historical Tax Credits. These are great potential sources of more money for school facilities, but based on our analysis, we do not believe they can cover the $422 million gap. We fully support the idea of leveraging existing funding and raising more money for facilities; however, given the lack of concrete details, we are concerned that Commitment Eleven overstates what will be possible without major changes to the SFMP.

Overall, we think Superintendent White the RSD team did a great job of listening to the community’s concerns and incorporating them into its strategic plan, which, when implemented, will lead to a better RSD.