Last year, I wrote a diary about the elementary school in my neighborhood, how it had weathered the storm and flood, been "cleaned out" by destroying every bit of the furnishings and supplies, then been boarded up and essentially abandoned by the school district.
This week the district held its first--and only--public meeting with residents of our area on their plans for our school. Our neighborhood decided to give them the "input" they asked for.
I thought the story of our appearance at the meeting might be of interest to kossacks, not just because it's part of the story of New Orleans' recovery, but because it serves as a primer for effective local activism.
First, a little backstory. Before the federally-maintained levees failed and flooded the city, the Orleans Parish school system was already a disaster. Long-delayed maintenance, discipline problems, harried teachers and endemic corruption made for a system where learning was a rare and miraculous occurance.
With the system approaching bankruptcy, both in its finances and its credibility, calls for a takeover by the state or even the feds began to grow.
Then It came and changed everything.
By the beginning of the 2006-7 school year, the system was under the control of a new entity, the Recovery School District, run by the state Department of Education. (Plenty of details here, here and, wiki-fied, here.)
The system is puttering along fairly well now. With the city's population now topping 300,000, the combined Oreleans Parish School Board/Recovery School District has about 30,400 students enrolled. Still the effects many of its innovations, including the highest number of charter schools in the nation, have yet to be thoroughly analyzed. But there are still a lot of challenges.
One major open question is, what should the district do with its buildings? After FEMA's audit of OPSB/RSD properties, 10 of 314 permanent buildings and all "temporaries" are scheduled for demolition. The remaining buildings are the subject of a series of area meetings. Last night, our school was on the block.
Morris F.X. Jeff, Sr. School opened in 1904 as McDonough School #31 and used both as a public school and as an industrial arts school as part of Delgado Jr. College. Through the years, it has also partnered with the Coast Guard for training programs and the nearby Bibleway Church, which opened an associated pre-K program. It consists of a handsome 3-story brick main building and a series of portable classrooms in the rear.
As the smallest building in the city's school system, it has capacity for only about 350 students, which is less than the RSD's target of 450-600 for K-8 schools, but more than adequate for the surrounding neighborhood.
After Katrina hit and the levees broke, neighbors used the school as an impromptu emergency shelter. It was tough sledding with no water, power or working sewage system, but the building's new roof had held up admirably in the storm's winds and the structure provided much needed refuge for flooded homeowners until evacuation/rescue was possible.
Since September 2005, the school has stood empty, with only a brief flurry of rip-it-out/toss-it-out "cleanup." When the public meeting to determine the building's fate was announced, our neighborhood went into action.
Neighbors gather to plan our strategy
First, neighbors organized a planning meeting last Saturday, where all concerned could come and air their thoughts on what should happen to the school and plan for Thursday night's public meeting. In a general session and breakout groups, we concurred that:
We wanted the building repaired and reopened as an elementary school.
We needed as many people as possible at the public meeting, with a few spokespeople.
We needed a unified message and appearance, though we are very diverse in age, race, class, gender, etc.
People volunteered for various tasks--gathering petition signatures, alerting the press, organizing rides, etc. Me, I jumped in with my specialty: T-shirts.
The "t-shirt factory" cranks up as the Dems debate
Blue and white are this season's colors for the activist on the go
Thursday night, we gathered at the Bibleway church to carpool and caravan, a blend of young, old, black, white, comfortable and struggling.
Mustering the troops at Bibleway
Clarence and Theresa, former principal and teacher from Jeff School
We entered the meeting en masse and took up the front half of the meeting room. We listened politely as Constance Caruso and David Williams of the RSD Planning Board laid out the scenarios for our area's schools. Their preferred plan for Morris Jeff was to "repurpose" the site and open another school elsewhere. We let them know, forcefully and succinctly through our spokespeople, that we felt differently.
Friends of Jeff take over the joint
While the Planning Board has not made its final decision on Morris F.X. Jeff (we won't know until May), Caruso and Williams told us that one key factor in the Board's decisions is community support and involvement, and that our group, both those present at the meeting and the hundreds of signatures we'd gathered, had been the largest at any meeting for any school, and that our desires to see Jeff re-opened would be given priority because of that.
The Jeff Mob poses for a group pic after the meeting
I wanted to diary this because it illustrates some basic principles of community activism that work:
- Keep a unified, simple message.
- Prepare the press; they can be your allies.
- Numbers matter; the more, the mightier.
While there are always lots of different views and opinions in any group, finding a common message that all can agree on, having a limited number of spokespeople to deliver it, reinforcing your message with signs, shirts, etc. and getting the press on your side make your voice more effective when trying to sway the powers that be.
I'll keep everybody posted on the future of Morris F.X. Jeff as we get more information. Until then, remember Fudd's First Law of Opposition: "If you push something hard enough, it will fall over."
(I'd rather have called this "Re-open My @#%&ing School, RDS," but our group is a little more polite than ErrinF.)