Tagged: education

Try to picture 14,000 youth.

Fourteen thousand exceeds the number of registered students at Tulane and the University of New Orleans. It’s a greater number than the combined enrollments of Loyola, Dillard and Xavier Universities. Fourteen thousand youth is about a third of the total number of students that attend public schools in Orleans Parish. The number is approximately 4000 seats shy of a full house at a Hornets game. If a company hired 14,000 youth it would be the largest employer in the city.

The University of New Orleans has been awarded grants totaling $5 million over a five-year period by the Upward Bound program through the U. S. Department of Education.

The grants will fund three projects: UNO's Project Pass, UNO's Jefferson Upward Bound and UNO's Classic Upward Bound.

BATON ROUGE — Louisiana's Department of Education says the state's annual dropout rate has fallen for three years in a row. A department news release says the percentage of dropouts in seventh- through 12th grades decreased from 3.5 in 2009-2010 to 3.1 in 2010-2011. That means 1,100 more students chose to stay in school. 

Construction of four new schoolhouses should be completed as classes resume in August, education officials announced Wednesday night, but modular buildings are ready just in case.

Capital projects, including ground-up school construction, highlighted Wednesday night’s meeting in New Orleans of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. The board meets periodically in New Orleans — Wednesday’s meeting was at Walter L. Cohen High School — to address Recovery School District issues.

If our political fights barely rise above the embarrassing displays of violence within the communities that officials are supposedly serving, then it’s time for a radical change in representation.

At the May 15 Orleans Parish School Board meeting, black angst sparked among fellow members around matters of disrespect in the naming of an interim superintendent. After a round of feinting punches, the board voted along black and non-black lines to name an interim.