Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Community Protests Election of Homophobic School Board Vice President

On Thursday, January 17, the Orleans Parish School Board suspended its own rules so it could re-elect an openly homophobic school board member as Vice President. Despite the vocal opposition of the LGBTQ community and the Erase the Board Coalition, the board voted to re-elect Leslie Ellison and John Brown to their current positions, against the will of the people of Orleans Parish. Instead of responding to the 30 people who spoke in opposition to Ellison (and the entire board), they offered only a token acknowledgment of the outrage by changing the elections and putting another board member up for Vice President at the last minute. Still, they voted 4-3 to reinstate the same officers who have sold New Orleans schools off to private hands. Ellison’s history of homophobia came to light as she was running for President of the board, with community members revealing her testimony against anti-bullying provisions for LGBTQ youth and her history of supporting pro-charter school policies and officers. The OPSB chose to maintain the status quo instead of listening to the voice of the people. Their long history of disservice to the New Orleans community shows that they have no respect for the students they should be serving. The board must be replaced and schools turned over to the control of the community.