Orleans board votes to establish Leah Chase School, city’s first direct-run campus in years

NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) - For the first time since 2019, NOLA Public Schools will directly operate a school, starting this fall.

With a unanimous vote Monday evening (Feb. 26), the Orleans Parish School Board moved forward with establishing the Leah Chase School at the site of the current low-performing charter Lafayette Academy on Carrollton Avenue.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to directly run a school, which will be called the Leah Chase School,” NOLA-PS Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams told Fox 8 at the board meeting.

The school is named in honor of famed New Orleans chef Leah Chase, who passed away in 2019.

“Just naming it after such an iconic person from our community means so much. We’re excited about the opportunity,” Williams said. “It’s good to feel the energy from the community around school and education. That’s not something we always feel. And so, that gives me some hope and some optimism that this is going to be great for children.”

The new district-run school will open for the 2024-25 school year and will begin with grades K-5 before gradually expanding to include pre-K through eighth grade.

Williams acknowledged there are a number of moving pieces when it comes to opening a new school, and that August is an ambitious deadline. But she assured the district is equipped for the heavy lift.

“It’s going to take the whole community,” she said. “We’re going to need partnerships and support. And so, I do look forward to all those folks who were here, cheering on this movement and wanting the board to move forward with this. I’m going to be looking to you all to support.”

Community members at Monday’s meeting hailed the vote as a milestone for public education in New Orleans.

“It will give you back your control as a government body. It will start the process,” one told the board.

“Our scholars need to be prepared to meet the challenges of the 21st Century, and I think this is the way to begin,” said another.

OPSB consolidated with the state-run Recovery School District in 2018. The RSD had been operating charters in New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina devastated the city.

“I think there has been pressure for a while for the district to act more directly within the school system,” said Tulane University professor Douglas Harris, director of the Education Research Alliance of New Orleans.

“With charter schools, they’re acting indirectly. They’re waiting for the contracts to expire, they’re trying to get new schools open through charter organizations. But you get to the school board meeting and people say, ‘Well, what about this school?’ And, ‘This school over here isn’t doing what we’d like them to do.’ It was a big shift that happened in the system after Katrina that was really reducing the district’s responsibility over day-to-day management of schools.”

But Harris also acknowledges the difficulty in opening a school on such a short time frame, especially for a district already facing staffing and funding challenges.

“They’re trying to govern this system of charter schools and have this separate operation of running schools at the same time,” Harris said. “The district doesn’t have a lot of funding at the district office. They don’t have a lot of people. It’s already a challenging thing to try to govern this charter school system. Now, you’re adding another very different kind of responsibility by trying to actually manage these schools on a day-to-day basis.”

Williams said a strategic plan is being formulated for the district’s goal of opening more direct-run schools in the coming years.

The school board said current Lafayette parents will have first priority when it comes to getting their kids assigned to Leah Chase School. Williams said more information will be provided when the district has a press conference Thursday (Feb. 29) to formally announce the new school.

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