OPEN exists to serve as a conduit for broad and diverse community engagement, facilitating productive collaboration between citizens and policy makers.

Orleans Public Education Network first convened in late 2007, when several groups including Committee for a Better New Orleans, the Greater New Orleans Education Foundation, Urban League of Greater New Orleans, the Louisiana Justice Institute, and the Children’s Defense Fund began to meet with the goal of framing a common theme for public schools.

Navigating New Orleans’ storied racial divide and always engaging transparency in the process, the groups determined in conjunction that an engaged and informed public was the most effective path to building student success and equity in a historically-troubled landscape. The new OPEN members determined that the central aim of the work would be creating civic capacity in public education.

OPEN Highlights

Participatory Research Project

Our motto is “We begin by listening,” and it shows in the genesis of our work. In 2009, almost four years into the changed landscape of New Orleans, there was no pulse on the public sentiment around education until our Participatory Research Project gathered surveys, interviews and focus groups throughout a broad and diverse cross-section of the community. This effort, which engaged over 600 citizens, resulted in a research statement which identified the key concerns and issue areas and laid the groundwork for the ONE STEP Campaign.

ONE STEP and The People’s Agenda

The ONE STEP Campaign was OPEN’s seven-month initiative to bridge the gap between educational policymaking and community involvement. The central aim of the ONE STEP Campaign is to build a collective community vision for the future of public education in New Orleans. To include everyone in the conversation,

OPEN hosted a panel on a new topic each month featuring presentations and roundtable discussions by policymakers and practitioners at the national, state and local levels. Each panel event provided a unique opportunity for the community to connect with education professionals and form “working groups” in neighborhoods across the city to meet and create recommendations on each topic informed by best practices.

The series culminated in March 2012 with the publication of The People’s Agenda, a framework for quality public education created by the people and for the people. The report presents the community’s vision for local public education and outlines a set of strategic policy and programmatic initiatives to achieve this vision.

What Works and Why?

In response to growing concerns on how to identify successful or emergent schools, OPEN committed to host its What Works and Why series in 2010, which identified best practices in New Orleans education facilities. Our work is centered around these Correlates of Effective Schools: they are the abiding principles through which we determine the OPEN Public Education Awards, make recommendations to policymakers, and invite community dialogue around what we can do to help our schools.

Charter School Taskforce, RSD Community Taskforce and OneApp

In early 2012, OPEN convened the Coalition for Community Leadership in Education (CCLE), a group of New Orleans residents who desired greater community ownership of public schools and a common commitment to the academic, physical, and emotional wellbeing of New Orleans children. Through a series of convenings and press conferences, these citizens demanded a fair process that empowered communities to improve public education throughout the city, and protested the corporate reform and community disenfranchisement that accompanied the then-current reform movement.

The CCLE’s efforts paid off in the formation of the Recovery School District Charter Application Task Force, an organizing body created to address this exact issue, and the development of a clear, transparent and consistent method for community groups to charter their own schools.

In 2012, OPEN’s Executive Director Deirdre Johnson Burel co-chaired the Recovery School District Community Engagement Task Force. Citizen outcry for a clearer and more accessible OneApp process led OPEN and others to convene this meeting series, which examined the controversial program in detail and made specific, actionable recommendations — clearer informational supports for parents, wider availability of the application, and a streamlined process — that led to the OneApp as we know it today.

OPEN Programs Take Flight

2012 also saw the release of OPEN’s formal membership model, and the establishment of our annual Public Education Day at the Capitol. We also began to dive deeper into programmatic work:

• PLTI NOLA: In 2013 we founded the first New Orleans chapter of the Parent Leadership Training Institute, an intensive 20-week program that trains local parents in civic capacity, media, and leadership skills to help them become powerful advocates in their neighborhoods, schools, and communities. PLTI NOLA alumni continue to network, advocate, and make change in their communities with OPEN’s full support after graduating.
• Ready, Set, Go!: The RSG initiative has become the early childhood arm of OPEN, relying on the study-validated Early Development Instrument and its five domains of child development to gather data on the needs of five-year-olds across the city. Over the course of our data collection, coverage of New Orleans kindergarten-age children skyrocketed from 2% to over 65%, providing a wealth of information for communities to direct resources, expose achievement gaps, and support grants to meet the needs of their children.
• The OPEN Public Education Awards: What does excellence look like? The OPEAs were created in order to show it to the world. These awards are built on the Correlates of Effective Schools to determine impact results, using both qualitative and quantitative data to take a holistic examination of student success. Each OPEA holds up the commitment to learning exemplified by these outstanding educators and institutions: a proud network of change agents who are doing right by their students every single day. Click here to learn more about the OPEAs.
• Public Education Day @ the Capitol: OPEN hosts a yearly bus trip to Baton Rouge from New Orleans for over 70 local residents, parents, and students to attend the state’s BESE and House Education Committee meetings, meet with legislators, and voice their support for local public education. The purpose is to elevate participants’ understanding of the democratic process and connect local community members to important legislative activities and their elected officials during the legislative session. To prepare for the trip, participants receive OPEN’s Policy Toolkit and hands-on training from One Voice Louisiana. Once in Baton Rouge, participants spoke to legislators and gave inspiring testimony around proposed legislation.
• Legislative Breakfast: Every year, constituents gather at OPEN’s Legislative Breakfast to talk face-to-face with policymakers on crucial issues in public education. Past participants have included Orleans Parish School Board President Seth Bloom, District 9 Senator Conrad Appel, District 91 State Representative Walt Leger, and representatives from the offices of Senator David Vitter and City Councilmember Nadine Ramsey.

OPEN Publications

The People’s Agenda was just the first of many publications sponsored by OPEN. In 2013, we released Public Education in New Orleans Eight Years After Katrina: The Intersection of Race, Equity, and Excellence, a comprehensive overview of the landscape, including major schools and organizations, a history of post-Katrina school governance, exhaustive data on student achievement, and interviews with school, district, nonprofit education organization and community group leaders. A slew of new material quickly followed, including The Everyday Person’s Guide to Public School Funding in Louisiana, OPEN’s 2014 and 2015 Policy Priorities, and an updated version of The Policy Toolkit.

OPEN Public Education Awards

Looking to the Future

With New Orleans at the center of a national debate over school reform and external influences increasingly making decisions that affect local stakeholders, a direct community conduit to the future of our education system is more crucial than ever. As the implications of Act 3 continue to play out, incoming high school freshmen determine a path of college or career diplomas, and Orleans Parish continues its search for a superintendent, you can count on OPEN to provide the data-driven research, direct community engagement, and courageous, audacious leadership that help citizens stay hands-on in our schools.