School Siting Summit Begins the Conversation!

The Cowen Institute and the Center for Urban and Public Affairs hosted a Statewide Summit on School Siting last Wednesday through a grant from the National Trust for Historic Preservation. There was a great turn out! The interest and momentum around Louisiana in where schools should be is exciting.

The Summit’s purpose was to explore school siting from various points of view. We had participants from the Louisiana Department of Education, FEMA, the Orleans Parish School Board, Preservation Resource Center, the Recovery School District, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans, and many other governmental and community organizations from throughout the state. Experts in the following areas— educational adequacy, historic preservation, green building, public health and transportation/Safe Routes to School—presented the values they think are important to consider when addressing where schools will be. We then broke out into smaller groups to discuss the topic areas addressed by the speakers and to think about what partnerships could be made between the different subjects. These conversations were diverse as the attendees conversed about the on the ground challenges in making responsible school siting decisions and how we can work to overcome them. We then came back together and discussed the small groups’ main points on how all of the different perspectives on school siting can work together and what is needed in order to begin this process.

We then heard from the featured speaker of the conference John Hildreth, the Director of the Southern Regional Office of the National Trust. John spoke of the importance of preserving historical buildings for schools when appropriate. John also discussed the significance of having schools within our communities rather than set apart. This is of particular interest in New Orleans where space is confined and there is a need to be creative when it comes to school siting.

The summit ended with the group coming up with policy recommendations on how to move forward in a healthy way incorporating all of the central elements in school siting: making sure all of the children’s needs are met, walkability for neighborhood children, spaces for the community to meet, preserving schools that are workable in communities and making sure we are environmentally sensitive. Incorporating all of these ideas into school siting decisions is complex yet essential to making sure that our children and communities work together to create schools that are the centerpieces of our city.