Erase the Board Coalition

Armtrice Cowart of the Erase the Board Coalition speaks at the New Orleans International Working Women’s Day March, March 16.

To the Orleans Parish School Board,

We have made our demands plain on several occasions, and here they are again.

First, we would like to acknowledge the attempt to implement two of our demands, which was the School Improvement Plan as well as the issue of TRAUMA—although they were not done as we originally stated. A part of the reason these demands were not implemented correctly is the same reason we are in this position in terms of education in the city of New Orleans. Your work is being done without including several other very important stakeholders such as parents, community members and local experts.

Erase The Board Coalition, as a group, has no interest in meeting with any entity in private. However, if there is a genuine interest in publicly going on record that this disastrous experiment has been a complete failure and you display a vested interest in course correcting, we are ready and willing to roll up our sleeves and work shoulder to shoulder with you to secure a truly equitable public school system for Orleans Parish students and families.

In closing, we would again like to show our demands:

  • Implement an immediate moratorium on charter school expansion
  • No more school closures. Orleans Parish School Board must permanently take over every failing school and implement school improvement plans using the sustainable community school model (e.g. Louisiana Legislature SR 133)
  • Conduct a series of accountability audits administered by the Erase The Board Coalition in schools that have a C score or lower
  • For the five schools set to close, Orleans Parish School Board needs to take over each school for it to remain open, and pay for private tutoring for all students impacted by the potential school closures and the instability at those campuses during the 2018-2019 school year
  • Abolish the One App and develop a more equitable centralized enrollment system that prioritizes access to neighborhood schools

We love our children and sincerely believe that these demands are not luxuries and should be the standard. We are diligent in our work and unwavering in our belief that this is both necessary and attainable. If these simple demands are not met, we have no choice but to continue to pull apart the fabric of this very unstable system and the people who have helped create and maintain it.

 

Sincerely,

Erase The Board Coalition

 

About Erase The Board Coalition: The Erase The Board Coalition is a grassroots-led effort composed of community leaders, parents, and grassroots education justice groups such as FFLIC and Step Up Louisiana, as well as Peoples’ Assembly and Take Em Down NOLA, established to remove the current Orleans Parish School Board members off of our board and to replace them with leaders who will actually listen to the demands of their community and run our schools as sustainable community schools! #EraseTheBoard #CharterExperimentNOLA #LetKidsBeKids #WeChoose #ReclaimOurSchools #SchoolChoiceScam #FollowTheMoney #NOLACharterCorruption #SchoolToPrisonPipeline #WhatsTheNameOfOurSchoolNOLA