New Orleans’ first direct-run school in nearly two decades cleared an important hurdle this week: Enrolling enough students.
The new school, named for New Orleans chef Leah Chase, had 252 students registered as of Thursday. Another 30 kids are expected to attend, but still need to complete the enrollment process.
District officials said earlier this year the school, located at 2727 South Carrollton Avenue, could serve up to 320 students in grades K-5, but needed at least 250 to operate.
“I’m really proud of our school team for closing the gap,” Superintendent Avis Williams told board members this week. The update led one, Olin Parker, to apologize.
“I know I’ve been skeptical of how many kids we’d be able to get,” he said, later adding, “I should have never doubted.”
“We were all concerned,” Williams replied. “I’m elated and we were all on pins and needles when enrollment first opened, so I understand.”
Officials have had to rush to get The Leah Chase School up and running after the district decided in February, relatively late, to run the school directly.
The school, then Lafayette Academy, lost its charter during last year’s renewal process. Williams first said the school would remain open. But when no new charter operators applied to take the school over, she said it would close. Only after pushback from the community and her own school board, did she announce the district would run the school itself.
It’s a turning point for the country’s once only all-charter school district. Many see Leah Chase as a test of whether the district is ready to run its schools directly after largely ceding day-to-day operations to charter operators since Hurricane Katrina.
And while Leah Chase is just one school, board members have said they want the district to run more schools when their charters lapse and have asked Williams to develop a plan.
Because of the late decision to run Leah Chase, Lafayette families were told to enroll their children elsewhere. District staff then had to reach back out to tell them their kids could stay. Roughly 90 students enrolled right away when the process opened in June.
In addition to recruiting students, the district has had to rebuild its capacity to educate, hiring a chief academic officer, a director of fine arts, as well as purchasing curriculum.
Since enrollment is still a moving target (families can register through September), so is staffing.
Twenty-five positions have been filled so far, with at least another 13 to go. Four of those have pending offers and officials say almost all others have candidates somewhere in the interview process.
The district is competing with its own charters for talent and its competitive pay scale reflects that, with a starting salary of $57,500 for teachers with a bachelor's degree. The average salary for a New Orleans teacher with three years of experience is $47,000, according to the nonprofit New Schools for New Orleans.
The first day of school for Leah Chase students is Tuesday, Aug. 6.
