In response to State Superintendent Paul Pastorek’s November 14, 2010 recommendations for the future of local school governance models in Orleans Parish, OPEN has produced a statement of its own recommendations which modify his proposal to include a community process and greater transparency in decision-making. OPEN’s statement specifically advocates for a clear process of involving community members to determine the future of local school governance in New Orleans in 2011, that a minimum of five RSD committee meetings be held in New Orleans annually, and that OPSB be considered as an operator in the school turnaround process.
This collaborative report by OPEN and the Loyola Institute for Quality and Equity in Public Education was written in April 2010 to open up the conversation about the future of public education governance in New Orleans and identify core values that should be upheld in the process to ensure transparency, equity, and accountability in the decision that is ultimately made. After presenting a comprehensive picture of the existing multipartite structure for public education governance in New Orleans, the report outlines key questions that must be addressed in the new governance decision. Such as: Who will be the new governing body? What will their roles and responsibilities include? How will the new governance structure be decided? After presenting some proposed solutions that have emerged which deal mostly with the questions of who and what, OPEN and IQEE address the question of how this decision will be made by advocating for a process of citizen participation in the conversation of governance and a concerted effort to include all community voices.
Read OPEN and IQEE’s The Value of Community Voice Report here.
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