New Orleans’ school board voted unanimously on Thursday to keep the Leah Chase School, the city’s only non-charter public school, open for at least another two years.
The decision, however, is contingent on receiving a portion of more than $2 million in private donations promised to the school from community members. The board said that if nearly $1 million of the pledged funds do not come through by Thursday (Jan. 15), it will close the school this summer.
While teachers, families, and community members celebrated the vote, which had been delayed until after the holidays, several board members tempered the mood.
“If we want Leah Chase to stay open year after year after year, we need students in the building, and I just do not want to lose that fact this evening,” said Katie Baudoin, the board’s president.
New Orleans’ schools are experiencing an overall decline in enrollment due to population loss, including outmigration and lower birth rates, according to demographers. That’s created problems for public schools, which receive federal and state funding based on enrollment.
Leah Chase — named for the much-loved culinary and civil rights icon — is underenrolled in its second year with about 340 students in grades K-6 as of mid-December. Officials plan to add a grade each year, up to eighth grade, and the building has a capacity for more than 700 students.
In response to Baudoin’s comment, board members Leila Eames and Gabriella Biro — the school’s most steadfast supporters — promised to boost enrollment.
“We are going to get bodies in the building and make the school special,” Eames said.
Also at the meeting, members waived a policy to make it easier for the district to accept money on the school’s behalf, and several board members promised to write their own checks.
The money pledged Thursday — $2 million from Karen Oser Edmunds, the grandmother of a student, and $225,000 from the Chase family — covers most but not all of the school’s projected deficit for the next two years.
Charter debate
Some board meeting attendees have disputed officials’ financial rationale, accusing them of wanting to return to an all-charter system.
Olin Parker, the board’s finance chair, reiterated Thursday that his decision was not about ideology.
“This has always been a math problem for me,” he said. “Can we operate this school in a way that is financially sustainable?”
No public commenters at Thursday's or December’s board meetings spoke in favor of closing Leah Chase, but business leaders called for its closure last month.
Leslie Jacobs, a former state board of education member who helped create the city’s charter system, has been critical of the district’s running of the school.
Parker stressed that, as stewards of public money, it isn’t responsible, in his opinion, to prop up a school financially if it continues to be in the red, when the district has tens of thousands of other students to support.
While charter schools are responsible for their day-to-day operations, the district provides staff, programs and other resources.
Prior to receiving private pledges of financial support, Fateama Fulmore, the district’s superintendent, said she would lay off about a dozen central office staff and make other cuts to cover the school’s projected deficit.
On Thursday, Fulmore suggested she would still take some cost-saving measures.
“We have organizational efficiencies that we are going to do,” she said. “So that we can give the children at the Leah Case School the education that they deserve.”
Civil rights issue
Over the last month, supporters of Leah Chase framed its survival as a civil rights issue, arguing the school serves students who haven’t received the services they are entitled to elsewhere.
While the school’s percentage of students with disabilities, at 10%, is lower than the district’s overall rate of 15% for grades K-8, teachers and parents said children with severe needs are receiving full services and being treated with “dignity” at the school.
Staff have also said Leah Chase serves a large number of students who are homeless and rely on the school for stability.
Earlier this week, Gail Etienne, one of the four then-first-grade girls who desegregated New Orleans schools in 1960, wrote a letter to the board asking them to keep the school open.
She compared her parents’ decision to send her to an all-white school to Leah Chase parents' fight for the school’s future.
“They are standing on the strength of their convictions, just as my parents did,” Etienne wrote. “These parents are advocating not for privilege, but for access; not for convenience, but for dignity; not for exclusion, but for the kind of public school education they know their children deserve.”
Thursday night, Leona Tate, another of the four, spoke to the board in person.
Closing the school would “erase a meaningful choice for families who want a public school that is accountable to the public,” she said.
“Parents are telling you it is working,” she added. “Closing a school that serves them well is harmful and cruel.”
Edgar “Dook” Chase IV got the final public word after the vote. He thanked the community for its fight for the school and promised his family’s continued support.
“Today is just day one,” he said.
Chase said his grandmother wasn’t afraid of hard work, failure and perseverance. The family restaurant was an important meeting place for civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. and Thurgood Marshall, during segregation.
“This school represents who she was, a woman faced with so many obstacles, but she overcame them all,” he said. “That’s the values of the Leah Chase School.”
He added, “Enrollment is just a small challenge.”
