After voting to close one charter school and terminate contracts with two school operators last week, NOLA Public Schools is now considering pitches from other operators seeking to open a new school and take over a couple of the district’s failing schools.

The board recently voted to shut down Living School, which has focused on catering to disadvantaged students, many of whom have been held back in school. During this year’s comprehensive evaluation process, as struggling schools facing the end of their contracts laid out improvement plans to the district, two other operators also gave up their charters for two schools, leaving the district to find new networks.

This year, the district received two applications from aspiring operators. One proposal, from Engaged Learning Academics, seeks to start a new middle school for students who have been held back at least a grade level. In a separate application, ReNEW Schools wants the school board to put it on a list of operators approved to take over failing schools, in hopes of running two more schools. 

NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Avis Williams is expected to announce her recommendations on whether the Orleans Parish School Board should approve or reject the applications at the board meeting on Thursday (Dec. 14). 

Both applicants have participated in public hearings, interviews and evaluations from groups of teachers, parents, community advisors and internal district evaluators. The evaluation groups sent out their recommendations for Williams last week: Not a single group recommended that the board approve Engaged Learning Academies’ request. But they recommended that the board should approve ReNEW’s application, with some suggesting a possible condition: The charter has to show improvement in student academic performance in one of the schools before being allowed to take over the second. 

A school tailored for ‘overage’ students

Engaged Learning Academies is applying to start a new charter focusing on students who have repeated at least one school year. Its mission is “to empower underserved and at-risk students and their educators,” said Erika Mann, a spokesperson for the organization, during a November hearing.

The group was registered as a nonprofit with the Louisiana Secretary of State in September and lists as its registered agent John Alvendia, the CEO of Star Academy, which offers programming to schools for students at risk of dropping out. Mann, also listed in the nonprofit’s state business records, is the former principal of Singleton Charter School, which the school board shuttered in 2022 after a slew of problems, including financial issues.

The proposed middle school would adopt the Star Academy curriculum — an accelerated, project-based program designed to target “overage” students who have been held back. It would focus on five education “labs” in the subjects of English, math, science, social studies and career and technical education.

If approved, the school would start with one grade level and accept only 80 students in its first year. 

The district currently has over 1,100 “overage” students in grades 6-9, according to data presented during the November public hearing. And many of those students are likely to drop out, Mann said.

“There has to be something done,” Mann said during the hearing. “I believe that this is at least one of the answers.” 

In a memo released last week, evaluators pointed out multiple weaknesses in the operator’s application, finding it lacking in detail and incomplete. Engaged Learning Academies’ responses to required application information were “brief and limited,” and evaluators found a lack of compelling evidence proving the Star Academy curriculum could lead to positive student outcomes. 

Engaged Learning Academies didn’t respond to requests for comment before publication time.

Two schools need new operators

The ReNEW charter school network was established in 2010 with a mission to transform underperforming schools, according to its website. The operator currently runs three schools across the district and ultimately plans to operate five pre-K-8 schools. 

Evaluators highlighted the organization’s commitment to serving students in the lowest-performing schools and its track record of turning around once-failing schools in their final feedback memo. However, ReNEW also wants to rehire former teachers from any failing schools they take over, which evaluators said could hinder progress. While none of ReNEW’s current schools have a state performance score higher than a “C” this year, all three schools scored an “A” in student growth. The memo also noted that ReNEW schools outperformed district averages on almost all state performance measures when looking at populations such as economically disadvantaged students or English language learners.

ReNEW did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

If approved, ReNEW Schools will join four other charters that have been approved by the board as eligible to participate in NOLA Public Schools’ open siting process, which takes place when the district must find a new school operator to keep a school open after a current operator surrenders its charter or has its contract terminated.

Two schools are currently up for grabs after the operators for Lafayette Academy (Community Academies of New Orleans, or CANO) and Robert Russa Moton Charter School (Advocates for Innovative Schools) agreed to surrender their charters at the end of this school year.

Only a set of pre-approved operators can apply to take over the schools, said Rafael Simmons, the district’s accountability director. The four currently approved operators are KIPP New Orleans, FirstLine Schools, CANO and Crescent City Schools.

KIPP likely can’t take over any schools at the moment without violating district policy that prevents a single operator from running schools comprising more than 15% of the district’s students. And it’s unlikely that the board would choose CANO, which just surrendered the charter for Lafayette, to take that school back, said Simmons.

Four other operators could also throw their hat in the ring to take over the failing schools. These operators — which run Edward Hynes, Lake Forest Elementary, Alice M. Harte and Willow School —  are qualified for “automatic replication,” meaning they can attempt to duplicate their programs to transform the failing schools. 

In the alternative, the school board could ultimately decide to consolidate Lafayette and Moton with other schools in the district.

Next week, the district is hosting meetings at Moton and Lafayette, where operators interested in taking over the schools can make their pitches. Simmons said the district will then gather community input via online surveys. The superintendent will announce her recommendations in early January.

The school board is also looking at other items this week:

  • Hiring a contractor to run a gift card program to help students experiencing homelessness buy shoes to meet schools’ uniform requirements.
  • Proposals for professional development in instructional practices for English learner services.
  • Policy tweaks to align with a new state law on school safety that mandates active shooter employee in-service training and additional active shooter drills.

Update: On Thursday (Dec. 14), the superintendent agreed with the evaluators’ recommendations to deny Engaged Learning Academies’ request and approve ReNEW’s application. The board will have until Dec. 19 to reject the superintendent’s recommendations. Applicants will also have until Feb. 23, 2024 to appeal the district’s decisions to the Louisiana Department of Education.

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Minh (Nate) Ha is a recent magna cum laude graduate from American University with a Bachelor's degree in journalism. His reporting work includes stories about how second-generation Vietnamese Americans...