OPSB Board Business Meeting – October 21, 2008

ORLEANS PARISH SCHOOL BOARD

REGULAR BOARD BUSINESS MEETING

Mc DONOGH #35 HIGH SCHOOL

1331 Kerlerec Street

New Orleans, Louisiana 70119

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

5:00 P.M.

The Orleans Parish School Board convened for a Board Business Meeting on Tuesday, October 21, 2008, in the auditorium of McDonogh 35 High School, 1331 Kerlerec St., New Orleans, LA. Rev. Torin Sanders, Board President, called the meeting to order at 5:08 p.m.

Board Roll call: Ms. Una Anderson, absent*; Ms. Cynthia Cade, present; Ms. Heidi Daniels, absent*; Mr. Jimmy Fahrenholtz, present; Mrs. Phyllis Landrieu, present, Ms. Lourdes Moran, present, Rev. Torin Sanders, present. Ex–officio Board Members: Mr. Darryl Kilbert, Superintendent, present; Mr. Edward Morris, General Counsel, present; Ms. Thelma French, Board Secretary, present.

Mrs. Anderson arrived at the meeting at 5:30 p.m. and Mrs. Daniels arrived at 6:10 p.m. and participated thereafter.

Rev. Sanders led the Board in a moment of Silent Meditation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

An audio tape of the meeting is available in the Board Office.

ADOPTION OF THE AGENDA:

There were no Additions, Modifications, or Deletions to the agenda.

Motion to adopt the agenda was made by Mr. Fahrenholtz, seconded by Mrs. Landrieu. Motion passed unanimously.

PRESENTATIONS/ ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Orleans Parish School Board Homeless Education Program for Efficient and Effective Grant Program Management

The Superintendent presented the recognition that was given to the Homeless Education Program, also known as the McKinney Vento Homeless Education Program, for their efficient and effective grant program management as recognized in a letter from the Department of Education on July 24, 2008. Mr. Kilbert acknowledged the Homeless department for their hard work over the last two years.

Ayesha Buckner, Homeless Liaison, and her assistant Shaundrell Santamarina, were both present at the meeting. Ms. Buckner stated that last year there were approximately 3,000 homeless children. This year, according to October 1, there are approximately 1,400.

Mr. Kilbert continued that much of what they’ve been doing is finding facilities for these students, finding support, finances, clothing, homes, a variety of medical needs are being addressed. They’ve done a fantastic job. Congratulations to the department.

Rev. Sanders also thanked the efforts of the Homeless program and commended their hard work.

PRESIDENTS MESSAGE

·  Receipt and Retention of Compilation Report of the Master Plan Public Comments

Rev. Sanders introduced the Compilation Report document, which is a report of all the public documents that have been received in response to the Master Plan since it was released. Once the Master Plan was released by our planners and received by the Board, we held the first Public Hearing in September here at McDonogh #35. It was very well attended. The meeting lasted for several hours and there was a great deal of public comment and input. Following that, we had an evacuation, after that and we extended the timeline for public comment. The decision was made also that each Board member in each district, Districts 1 through 7, would then in addition to the general, larger public hearings, that we would hold meetings in our representative districts and have members of the master plan team come and present an overall view of the Master Plan as well as a portion of the plan that related to that School Board District in particular. That was done in each of the 7 Districts. In addition to that, we also in conjunction with the City Council’s Education Committee, held another Public Hearing that was on October 1 in the morning. That also was well attended and a multi-hour event. That was also broadcast on the government channel that the City Council uses. And the public comment period officially ended last Friday, October 17, 2008. I just wanted to give that as a backdrop. Board Members, you may recall that tonight as it relates to the Master Plan, what we have agreed to do tonight is to receive this document, which is almost as big as the Master Plan, but to receive this document which is a compilation of all of the public comments during that period and to get a summary of that. But to also allow individual Board Members and the Board as a whole to express publicly their comments, any concerns, issues, things that they would like for our superintendent to address before coming back to the Board with a final recommendation on the Master Plan for us to vote upon. Currently, we are scheduled to vote on the Master Plan on November 6, Thursday, November 6, 2008, and that meeting will also be here at McDonogh #35.

Rev. Sanders continued by saying to all the members of the public who are here – and we are grateful to have you here, thank you for your participation – that, as always, whenever the Board votes on an item, that then there is an opportunity for public comment. As I mentioned earlier tonight, we will not be voting on the Master Plan or anything relating to the Master Plan, we’re just receiving this public comment. But when we do vote on the Plan on November 6, there will be ample time – in fact that is a Special Meeting that we are going to hold. We didn’t want anything else on the agenda; we didn’t want anything else to take up our time on that night except being able to deal with this most important issue as it relates to the school system, which is setting a future course for all of our facilities and buildings and we all know that for generations now, decades now, we’ve needed this type of plan and this type of work. I just wanted to make those comments in the interests of clarity so that everyone would know exactly what we have done and what we are preparing to do and what we are doing tonight. I know we have at least one school I see very well represented, the Rams from Carver High School, give yourselves a hand. PM High School is also represented.

With that, I would ask the representatives of the Master Planning Team come forward to give us a brief synopsis of the report and the public comments. Board Members, at that time, we will be able to raise any of our issues. They’re not really necessarily prepared for a question and answer. This is about the receiving of the public comments.

Ms. French stated that there are two specific items on the agenda. One of them is to receive the compilation of the report and the other was something that you had asked for is that for the Board Members to have a public opportunity to state their recommendations to the Superintendent so as he goes back to work with the other Superintendents, publicly your recommendations are on the record. That is what we are prepared for. Board Members, Behind Tab 1 behind the Homeless sheet, there are two items: there are a set of questions that we took from the October 2 meeting that were asked by Board Members and attempted to address those questions. Those questions all came out of those minutes. Then there are two reports that are not in the public comment document because these are reports that were requested by Board Members and did not come through the public comments. They relate to the Master Plan.

Ms. Moran stated that she thought the question was when were the Board Members going to be doing this?

Ms. French responded at this Board Meeting and that is what was published and noticed.

Ms. Constance Caruso, RSD Planning Director, addressed the Board. A transcript of her comments is as follows:

Good evening. I’m Constance Caruso, the Recovery School District Planning Director. I’d like to say thank you very much. I’d like to say thank you to all of you <indicating to the audience> to all of you that are here and to everyone that did give us a comment. We greatly appreciate it and we are very happy that part of the process worked, as you can see by that document. We heard many things heard from you all. I will give you just a very brief synopsis since are so many comments.

These are comments that deal with issues. The very first comment we received was that we had support for the Plan and for that we thank you very much. We had a number of comments so this is just a brief synopsis of a pile where we had more than one comment.

·  Equity was an issue. Equity and regard to facility placement; utilization of resources; stabilization of our buildings; maintenance, and implementation of the Plan. So that is something that will be looked at as far as addressing implementation of plan.

·  Leadership. Leadership meaning what is our governance gong to look like. There were many questions asked as to how will we bring together RSD, OPSB, and where will that process go? Because that directly reflects a number of our concerns from our citizens is where their schools will be in governance and leadership.

·  Sustainability. Sustainability not only in facilities but sustainability in governance. That seems to be a primary issue that’s come forward.

·  Funding. Everyone’s aware that we have funding for part of the Plan and where is the funding going to come for the rest of the Plan? We are hoping that building the buildings that we build and showing that we can make progress, we will have the support of our community so can continue to build and renovate.

·  Landbanking was something that is clarified in the FAQ that we have and in a number of meetings. Landbanking means that property can be sold, traded with another public entity, or held for future use. This is not to be confused with demolition, which I think we’ve made clear and people have a pretty good understanding of that at this point.

·  Disinvestment and blight of our buildings our facilities is an issue that has come up many times. How do we see a process to return the buildings that are surplussed to commerce so that we no longer create blights. We have so much blight in the city that we don’t want to contribute to it and neither does our comments. That seems to be an important one.

·  Trust. How do we foster trust? Do we go forward with this blueprint and make progress and improve our facilities therefore giving our children the best place that they can learn and grow and build trust in our community.

·  Programs versus facility. There seems to be a confusion between programs and facilities. If we close a facility it does not mean we are closing a program. Some of the comments, there was confusion between the two so we’d like to clarify that.

·  There was a request, again, as through entire process for community schools and neighborhood schools.

·  There were questions as to what is the process to amend this Plan annually as we go forward?

·  There was a major request to please continue to engage our community as we have not only in the public comment portion but throughout the adoption and amendment of the process, but as in the Quickstart program where have community input on not only design but renovation and construction. So that has been something that we have heard over and over again and that it’s working in the Quickstart process. The recommendation to continue that, I’m sure the community would like to see.

So that in a nutshell is that binder that you have.

Rev. Sanders asked if Ms. Caruso at the beginning gave the total number of comments or the summative data? Did you do that?

Ms. Caruso responded that it is in documents that were given to you.

A comment from the audience was that we would like to be privy to that information as well.

Ms. Caruso stated that the total number is 612 comments. However, you need to look at them in the regard that some of them – many people addressed some of the same concerns. The majority of them were addressed towards schools themselves. And of course these issues were also raised and these comments were in writing, in person, in our public meetings, library comment cards, and a number of ways.

Rev. Sanders asked if we had a count of the total people? Does the 612 equal to total people or were there…?

Ms. Caruso responded that they were individual comments

Rev. Sanders asked what about the public hearings?

Ms. Caruso replied that it is inclusive.

·  Orleans Parish School Members Public Comments and Recommendations for Consideration relative to Master Plan

Rev. Sanders acknowledged the arrival of Mrs. Anderson to the meeting. What we’ll do, and I will go last if you desire, we’ll start to my right and maybe do two rounds if necessary, but give 5-7 minutes to each person if you would like to use that much time to lay out whatever would like to lay out regarding the Plan. We will go around and if need to do second round, then we can do that. Just in the interests of timeliness, we’ll do that.

Mrs. Landrieu was the first to make her comments. A transcript of those comments follows:

First of all, I would like to complement the team who did the planning and our team who participated. I think that the work was extraordinary. I think the public comment opportunities were extraordinary and I don’t think anybody in this community who has paid attention to the process can legitimately say that they haven’t had a chance at input. I think that’s something that’s extremely important to this process. So again, thank you for all your hard work. I know the difficulty of making the kinds of choices and making the kinds of recommendations that you had to make. I’ve looked at it. I’ve studied the Plan a lot and I’ve had a lot of conversations with the planning group as well as with people in my district. Of course, there’s not going to be the perfect plan that pleases everyone. There’s going to be the best plan that accommodates all the children who want to come to New Orleans to go to public school and who will have a decent school to attend. Once I really came to the realization of what this plan is all about. It’s not to take all the existing schools we have now and put them all in better condition. It’s not to go out in New Orleans East and build to attract new students and new families to come in. The purpose of it is to look at number of students we have now, to look at the number of students that we anticipate, and to make sure that we have enough high-quality classrooms to put every child who wants a public education in this city in a place. And that’s our responsibility. And I think – and I know, in fact – that that was the goal of the
Plan and that’s what the Plan is trying to accomplish.