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New Beginnings Charter School Scandal: Children Pay the Price for CEO’s Greed

By Gabriel Mangano

One month after their scheduled graduation ceremony, 80 of 155 Kennedy High School seniors will not be able to graduate until they make up state requirements. This is the latest scandal from New Beginnings Charter Network (NBCN). Other charter schools are failing, with sudden closings and outrageously excessive punishments and financial corruption. The toll on our children in this failed experiment will continue to grow until we demand the return of our schools as public schools operated by an elected community school board.

In March, New Beginnings administrator Dr. Runell King alerted New Beginnings CEO Michelle Blouin-Williams to 17 illegal, manually changed final grades in Algebra III from F to D. These changes were made to increase the school’s graduation rate and allow it to retain its charter, even though it received an F on standardized performance. Blouin-Williams was forced to resign over these grade irregularities, as well as forging board minutes to approve a busing contract. However, for Kennedy seniors, the horror has just begun.

King’s exposure of grade change irregularities led to the state and New Beginnings to investigate all graduating seniors and other student records. New Beginnings hired a consulting firm TenSquare, LLC at $90,000 to manage the Charter, and the firm’s research found nine distinct problems. End of Course (EOC) tests were not given, were failed or results were not recorded; incorrect class coding and failure to record final grades were frequent; transfer students had incomplete transcripts; and some students were over the state absence limit. Most outrageous was that the leadership had failed to correct the problem that allowed staff to be able to change grades. After the report, five Kennedy administrators resigned.

As a result, 80 of 155 seniors have still not been cleared to receive a diploma. New Beginnings says it will develop individual plans for credits and skills for those students who are not eligible to receive a diploma. For these students the lack of a diploma is forcing many to wonder if they will be able to attend college or trade programs or even get jobs until this mess is resolved.

So far, the pro-Charter Orleans Parish School Board has only “considered” revoking NBCN’s contract over improper grade changes and financial malfeasance (stealing). It’s clear that NBCN and the entire charter experiment has failed our children. It’s time for parents, teachers, and students to demand high quality public schools run for the education of our children instead of large paychecks for profit -making company executives who are doing a worse job than the OPSB.

Join the Erase the Board Coalition, which is fighting for our children and their right to a quality public education.

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Income Inequality in New Orleans Charter Schools

By Beatrice Deslondes, Letter to the Editor

Many charter school and charter network leaders are earning upwards of $200,000 per year in a city with a median income of $38,721.

My survey of budget audits for 34 New Orleans charter schools for the 2017-2018 school year reveals:

  • Among charter networks, CEOs received an average salary of $190,743 while managing an average of 4 schools.
  • Among non-network schools, the average principal earned a base salary of $143,417.

The salary charts of the neighboring public school district of Jefferson Parish recommend that a principal earn up to 1.75 times a teacher’s salary. On average, leaders in New Orleans earned 2.96 times what teachers earned.

Most audits stopped including teacher salaries in 2017-2018, but audits for the two previous years reveal a trend of increasing inequality. Between the 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 school years:

  • Average teacher pay dropped nearly 1% at non-network schools ($50,644 to $49,768) and 0.2% at networks (from $51,005 to $50,640).
  • Average leader salaries increased nearly 9% at non-network schools (from $144,217 to $155,234) and over 20% at networks (from $156,828 to $176,329).

Teacher shortages are a problem in New Orleans. According to a Cowen Institute report, teachers in New Orleans with Master’s degrees and 5 years of experience would need to spend 44% of their income on rent alone.

Information about pay for paraprofessionals or co-teachers is lacking in the audits. The Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) lists salaries for “Aides” between $18,863 and $23,955.

The school workers who support students’ most critical needs—security, nutrition, and health—are among the worst paid. The OPSB pay scale permits paying nurses and security workers as little as $22,427, while nutrition workers can earn as little as $16,000.

A 2018 report by the United Way of Louisiana concluded that the minimum annual income required to support human life in New Orleans in 2016 was $19,548 for a single adult and $53,988 for a family of four.

Income inequality contributes to high turnover rates in the school system and economic instability in the communities it is obligated to serve. Pay transparency and living wages for all school employees should be required of all institutions receiving public funds.

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Education Not Experimentation

May 18, Erase the Board led a march demanding quality public schools.

By Christina Tareq

“This is our Tuskegee,” shouted Armtrice Cowart, co-founder of Erase the Board, a grassroots coalition of community leaders, parents, and education justice groups. “Our children are being experimented on. This is our civil rights movement.” On Saturday, May 18, Erase the Board, along with the Peoples’ Assembly, Take Em Down NOLA and Step Up Louisiana, took to the streets to demand an end to OneApp, an end to charter school expansion and to demand the re-opening of quality public schools that are adequately resourced with the city’s tax dollars.

Post-Katrina, the New Orleans education system has become a cash cow for private charter school networks. Charter schools are not accountable to parents or children but only to the people who bankroll these education experiments on children through grants. Charter schools are also allowed to use unchecked disciplinary action which traumatizes children through rigid and damaging “behavior rules.” They are increasingly replacing educators, nurses and school social workers with police officers. They’ve also replaced thousands of qualified local educators with unqualified young people through Teach for America.

Currently, nearly 60% of students in the top 6 performing schools in New Orleans are white while 80% of Black students are in failing charter schools. The closure of public schools and the rise of charter schools marks a new era of segregation in education. If you support equitable and quality education in Orleans Parish for ALL children, get involved with Erase the Board. You can find out more on their social media pages @erasetheboardnola.

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Charter School Workers Strike, Get New Contract

In December, teachers and other employees in Chicago’s Acero charter school network went on strike for five days. Acero encompasses 15 campuses across the city. The workers are members of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU).
Over the five days, hundreds of teachers and other Acero workers took to the streets along with parents, students, and other allies. The strikers demanded a contract that would guarantee better conditions for teachers and students.

On December 14, the union vote for the new contract took place across all 15 schools. Union members voted overwhelmingly for the new contract (98%).
The contract provides for smaller class sizes, a reduced school year and equal pay with district [non-charter] teachers.

Significantly, the new contract also includes sanctuary school language, which bans Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from school property, denies ICE access to student records without a legal mandate, and more.

The wave of teacher strikes that spread through many states (and Puerto Rico) earlier in 2018 affected mainly public schools. The strike in Chicago, however, is the first example of a charter school worker strike in the country. This should send a message not just to charter school executives in Chicago, but to charter school employees all over the U.S. that they can organize just like public school employees, and with the support of students, parents, and other community members, they can win.

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Parents and Students Protest For-Profit School Closures

By Dylan Borne

They Demand: “Arrest the Board!”

On December 20th, 200 parents, teachers, and students packed the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) meeting to demand that McDonogh 35 Senior High School remain direct-run by the Board. They exposed the OPSB for intentionally letting McDonogh 35 fail so that a for-profit charter corporation could take it over.

“The School Board is coming as a business man. It’s not that they don’t know what they’re doing, it’s that they don’t care… OPSB has never raised an arm or eyebrow to their word, they shy away from it” –Alex, parent

“We’ve been told so many untruths, the word ‘lie’ isn’t strong enough… Pres. Trump has a better track record.” –Woodson, McDonogh class of ’85 graduate

Statement from youth organization Rethink New Orleans: “Equitable education for all young people to stand in solidarity with all students in New Orleans, and we want to make sure we keep McDonogh 35 direct-run”

“The police officers around here remind me of the charter I went to… y’all prepared us more for prison than anything else… for me this is life or death” –Antonio Travis, Black Man Rising

“Any school district worth its salt would jump at the opportunity to work with parents that are this involved… don’t say it’s about children if you don’t respect the voices of their parents”—G 2 Brown, Journey 4 Justice Alliance

“The time for us pleading, begging crying is over, the time now is to fight… we’re gonna recall the entire board. They refuse to listen to children, parents, and community. We’re done. We’re done begging and making our case. We sent them reports, we sent them data, we had people from Chicago come and talk about what happened to them, we’ve done it all. So if you’re still not listening, it’s over…we don’t wanna wait until it’s time to vote.”—Ashana Bigard, Families and Friends of Incarcerated Children

Paid representatives of Inspire NOLA, the Louisiana Association of Public Charter Schools, and other pro-charter organizations tried to make speeches. Audience members drowned them out with boos and chants. Parents and youth yelled “Whose Schools? Our Schools!” and “Arrest ‘em and do the time it took to make ‘em!”