RSD Facility Assignments: Third Time’s the Charm

In early November, the RSD released its recommended school building assignments for its schools.  The final assignments are due to be announced in December.  The assignments are in essence the second half of the School Facilities Master Plan, which was adopted in late 2008.  The master plan addresses how many facilities will be built or renovated and where they will be located, but it does not offer any guidance about which school programs will be located in those buildings.  Once the facilities assignments are finalized, schools will finally know where their permanent homes will be and should have an idea about when they will get there under the master plan.

Although the district has released a school building assignment plan twice before, no final version was ever adopted.  In August 2010 and January 2011, we analyzed the draft assignment plans.  We looked at things such as whether all school programs were included in the assignments and whether the schools to which programs were assigned were in the master plan.  Here, I will do the same thing with the current recommendations.  Note, similar to our previous analyses, this investigation looks at the big picture rather than trying to assess the appropriateness of each individual assignment.

For the most part, the current recommended assignments are thorough and match up well with the master plan.  Importantly, every building to which a school program is assigned is included in the master plan. Given that the recent amendments to the master plan make it likely that all projects in the master plan will be completed, the RSD’s assignments will result in every RSD school in the assignment plan being located in a building that is either new or recently renovated to some extent.

However, not every building in the master plan is scheduled to house a program at this point.  The following buildings are listed in the master plan but have no schools assigned to them: Allen, Andrew Jackson, Bauduit, Bio District High School, McDonogh 7, Military Maritime High School, and O. Perry Walker.  Two of these school buildings, the Bio District High School and the Military Maritime High School, are contingent upon additional funding being secured.  The other five school buildings, however, have no special conditions attached to them.  It is important that the RSD indicate, as part of the assignment plan, whether it believes these buildings will house programs in the near future.  If not, other plans may need to be made for the buildings, such as moving these projects to the “bottom of the list” in terms of funding or possibly returning them to the OPSB if it indicates a need for additional/different buildings.

Two schools that are currently open do not have building assignments. The buildings for two schools – Lagniappe Academies and A. P. Tureaud – are listed as “TBD.”  The RSD should provide more information about the criteria that will be used in determining a facility for these schools in the future.  Although there may be good reasons that these schools do not have an assignment, the district should let us know what steps it is going to take to make sure that they have an acceptable facility.  Until all schools have permanent assignments, the plan is incomplete.

Four other schools that are open this year are not mentioned in the recommended assignments at all: Schwarz Academy, ReNEW’s two Accelerated High Schools, and Sojourner Truth Academy.  Again, there may be reasons behind leaving these school programs out of the school building assignments.  For example, it was announced this week that Sojourner Truth will be closing at the end of the year.  However, barring the planned closure of the other schools, the district should make clear what the plans are for them.  This is especially important since three of these schools provide alternative education settings that are not duplicated by other schools in the RSD.

One question that is not answered by the assignment plan is the timeline for schools that are currently in modular buildings.  All of the school programs that are in modular buildings today are assigned a permanent home under the recommendations.  However, it is not clear how long it will take for these schools to move out of their modular campuses.  Because the master plan and the building assignments are so closely related, the RSD should attempt to answer this question in the building assignments and indicate whether the assignment plan will cause the district to prioritize certain projects in the master plan in order to move programs out of modular buildings as quickly as possible.

There is one disappointing aspect of the recommended building assignments.  The RSD has once again decided to create a plan for building assignments for only its schools, rather than in conjunction with the OPSB.  When the master plan was developed, the two districts agreed to work together to ensure that the portfolio of school buildings in New Orleans would be appropriately sized and located to serve all students.  The understanding was that the decision about where to locate individual school programs would likewise be a joint undertaking.  The best fit for each school can only be achieved if all schools’ needs are considered at once.

Overall, the recommended school building assignments are an improvement over previous versions in terms of including nearly all schools and fitting well with the master plan.  We hope that the district will finalize the assignments in December and keep them updated in the future.