OPSB Votes Down Collective Bargaining

Yesterday, the lame-duck OPSB voted to reject a new contract with the teacher's union.

Fahrenholtz, who had said all along that he would vote no, said, "It really needed to be addressed by the incoming board."

Really?

No similar crisis of conscience when it came to approving the school facilities master plan as a lame duck, however.

I wanted the board to pass the contract. The teacher was often seen as an impediment to progress but it's not like this new agreement is some stone-aged relic:

The contract proposal sought to give teachers a say in curriculum and professional development through an existing joint task force; to give teachers the right to expunge certain unflattering material from their personnel files after three years; and to allow union representatives time during the school day to allow them to handle school issues without interfering with instruction.

That seems pretty reasonable to me.

But I actually do agree with Jimmy Fahrenholtz that it's a matter that should be taken up by the new democratically elected school board. I just wish he felt the same way about his vote on the school facilities master plan.

And I also wish we'd picked a better incoming school board. It is highly unlikely that the issue of collective bargaining for teachers will be revisited by the new board. I believe that the current board would have voted to approve the contract had we not selected a new board that campaigned so openly against the teacher's union.

So How Many Master Plan Phases Do We Have Funding For?

Please, please, please read Sarah Carr's piece that profiles the proud history of Frederick Douglass High School on St. Claude Avenue. Douglass faces certain closure under the school facilities master plan.

How many snake oil salesmen have to come storming into town before we recognize the pattern?

Installed about eight years ago, the pipes might have brought cool air to the once-magnificent, now-decayed auditorium, but the school system never found the money to complete the second phase of the project.

The unfinished effort is emblematic of scores of well-meaning attempts to breathe life into the struggling academic program in recent years. Officials have repeatedly launched reform efforts, only to abandon them before they effect lasting change.

And there are scores of other unfinished projects, even if we're limiting our discussion to the facility itself. I'm lucky enough to have gone on a tour of the building and despite the appearance of decay, it is actually quite beautiful - not so far behind most other urban schools I've ever seen. The problem has been that on countless projects both before and after the storm, crews sent out to install things like light fixtures, intercoms, air conditioning systems, and ceiling tiles don't finish the jobs. They'll do things like only connect intercoms to some parts of the building or install outdoor light fixtures but not supply replacement light bulbs. Or as Ms. Carr reports, they'll install AC pipes but no AC unit.

Teachers, principals, students, parents, and community stakeholders operated under this neglect for years and years believing that - if they could just be allowed the stability and continuity to implement a strong academic program, if they could get the confidence and support of the school board, if they could just get basic facility maintenance - they'd be able to help our children succeed.

School communities like Frederick Douglass never quit on the kids. Instead, the city quit on the school communities. How else could a nationally acclaimed writing program like Students at the Center be discouraged from returning to Douglass? Instead, Paul Vallas and the RSD are implementing an experimental "theme" school at Douglass, a police academy, for the next year before the facility will likely be shuttered.

That's not change, it's more of the same failed slash and burn policy.

When you hire visionary principles who are well qualified and highly motivated and provide them a core of career teachers committed to the program, you can slowly but surely implement a healthy learning environment, a school culture - but only if you allow that community the stability, continuity, and basic resources necessary for parents and students to buy in.

When the district threatens schools with closure, castrates maintenance budgets, and constantly shuffles principals in and out, it is only natural for a school's academic and cultural fabric to unravel.

The RSD is sitting on $1.8 billion with the promise of a few "21st century schools" to replace the scores upon scores we'll be "landbanking" for other purposes.

Amongst other things, it's installing the pipes without the units. To play with Sarah Carr's characterization of the history of Douglass, it's yet another "launched reform effort" scheduled to be "abandoned before it effects lasting change."

'Scheduled' in the sentence above is my word and I choose it for a few reasons. First, in the case of Douglass, the brand new experimental police academy program is literally already being threatened with extinction after this school year (not that I care for that experiment anyway) AND the Douglass building is slated to be closed. Second, in more general terms, there is NO MONEY for any new facilities construction projects after the completion of the first phase of the master plan in 2013.

It is very easy to anticipate that this city may need facilities expansion after 2013. First, it is almost impossible to forecast the local and national trends that may contribute to population growth accurately enough to inform binding policy. Second, Concordia-Parsons has drawn up phases 2 through 5 in the master plan, admitting that phase 1 will drain every last cent but not finish the job. Spending every last penny to do half the job? Sounds sadly familiar, no?

BESE and the OPSB are seriously considering approval for the school facilities master plan. At a time when a traumatized community of children badly needs continuity and stability from their schools, we may be about to witness the blind rubber stamping of another poorly constructed, half funded, and experimental upheaval. The master plan abandons the neighborhood school model at the high school level in favor of a system that forces kids into the unfortunately sometimes hostile territory of a neighboring ward. Ask any teacher working in the RSD about the prevalence of geographic conflict but I'm sure you don't have to.

I don't have the stomach to continue this same pattern of half-assed and poorly-informed revolution followed by yet another yawning retreat in which nobody is held accountable.

Are people as mad about this as I am?

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RELATED:

In May, I looked at a small piece of the Parsons Corp. preliminary site assessment of Frederick Douglass High School and compared it to the school as it stood.

Liprap Leigh recaps Thursday's community testimony in front of the OPSB.

Did you know that OPSB member Jimmy Fahrenholtz, who expressed his "100% approval" for the master plan without having even read it, didn't bother to show up? He's not credible to vote on this. A lot of people tell me he's a good guy at heart but he's got no business making such a critical decision for this community if he's going to be so close minded as to not even read the document and not even pay lip service to divergent opinion. It violates public trust. We know that he is close to Steven Bingler's sister-in-law via social network and campaign contribution.

How pathetic is it that none, NOT ONE, of the OPSB members that did bother to attend was engaged enough to ask a question of the planners?

Here is the current schedule for regional master plan comment opportunities as hosted by individual OPSB members in their home districts. Two of them were today. The big event is the hearing at City Council on October 1st.

I'm still looking into how to support SOSNola's petition to extend the public comment period to January, lemme get back witcha on that.

Jimmy Fahrenholtz Sure Does Read Fast

OPSB member and perpetual candidate Jimmy Fahrenholtz was presented the school facilities master plan at a regular Orleans Parish School Board meeting this evening at McDonough 35 High School.

After looking it over for no more than the length of the meeting he proudly proclaimed to the Times-Picayune that he is "100 percent in support of the master plan."

That's rich because it was Jimmy Fahrenholtz who cut short Una Anderson's surprisingly strident questions regarding high school distribution uptown supposedly because tonight's meeting was only to be about determining procedure, not about expressing reservation or support.

While Mr. Fahrenholtz clearly isn't interested in hearing any public concern regarding the master plan or displaying any kind of his own healthy skepticism before taking one side over another, you'd still think he'd at least have the respect to at least sleep on the damn thing before expressing his undying enthusiasm.

Just for the sake of everyone's memory, let us recall that Jimmy Fahrenholtz is a frequent violator of campaign finance law and was very recently barred from running for Congress in District 2 due to outstanding penalties levied by the Louisiana Board of Ethics. Because those fines were levied as a result of his failure to follow the law during his race for Orleans Parish School Board, he has no business leading any kind of debate on the facilities master plan and his opinion shouldn't really be printed in the paper without the context I've provided here.

Let me mention that I can't seem to find where Mr. Fahrenholtz has filed a financial disclosure report since the storm. Also, I'll say that Steven Bingler's sister-in-law Sarah Usdin, a big education policy stakeholder in her own right, contributed to Mr. Fahrenholtz's 2004 race for OPSB. Also when Ms. Usdin was named to the Gambit's 2004 40 under 40, Fahrenholtz claims that he'd "trust her to back me up in a knife fight."

Now this simple contribution from four years ago, nor Mr. Fahrenholtz's closeness to members of the Bingler family would be a major problem except that, again, Mr. Fahrenholtz just pledged 100% approval for a plan he barely had a chance to look over.

Mr. Fahrenholtz should be excused from all debate related to the master plan and should also abstain from voting on any related binding or nonbinding recommendations. If he does not, the OPSB will have a hard time credibly passing judgment on this critical matter, particularly as voters elect replacements potentially poised to trumpet entirely different views.