Click above to enlarge. Courtesy of The Cowen Institute, New Orleans Public School Governance: A Primer on New Orleans’ Unique School Governance Structure (September 2015)
New Orleans Education: Fast Facts
In the years since Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become the national epicenter of public education reform. Today the once traditional public school system is home to an ever changing and robust education landscape.
• For the 2015-16 school year, 75 of the 82 public schools are charter schools. This represents a higher proportion of charter schools than any other school district in the country.
• Every charter school is overseen by a nonprofit school board, either individually or as part of their Charter Management Organization (CMO), an entity that oversees multiple charter schools.
• There are two permanent governing boards: the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) and the State Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE), which respectively govern 24 and five New Orleans charter schools. OPSB also directly runs six traditional schools.
• The Recovery School District, created shortly before Hurricane Katrina, was originally intended as a temporary measure to turn around five of the city’s failing schools. After Katrina, Act 35 recategorized the definition of “failing school” to encompass 102 of the city’s worst-performing public schools, which were subsequently taken over by RSD. (If the pre-Katrina rules had been applied, only 13 schools would have been eligible.)
• As of 2015-16, the RSD oversees the charter boards of 52 schools, but does not directly administer any.
• Charter boards are authorized through the OPSB, BESE, or RSD, or a combination thereof (click here for more information on the different types of charters). In return for autonomy over curriculum, staffing and other operational factors, charters are academically and financially accountable to the board(s) that authorized them.
• As of 2015-16, there are 41 individual school governing bodies in the city (as well as OPSB, BESE and the RSD). Only 24 schools are governed by a locally-elected body.
• In May 2015, the passage of Louisiana Senate Bill 432 decreed that all 52 RSD charters will return to OPSB oversight by 2018.
