The NOLA Public Schools district is “looking into” KIPP New Orleans Schools’ unannounced board vote to close one of its high schools, a district spokesperson said on Saturday.
The KIPP board’s vote appears to have skirted Open Meetings Law. That’s because the meeting’s agenda did not indicate a school closure would be discussed, let alone voted on.
On March 12, KIPP’s board voted to close C-rated John F. Kennedy High School, relocate A-rated Frederick Douglass High School and rename it John F. Kennedy High School, according to a resolution submitted to the Orleans Parish School Board.
Both schools will remain open through the 2025-26 school year. The vote effectively closes the Douglass school and, in the fall, the two student bodies will merge at Kennedy’s newer campus.
Asked why the closure wasn’t listed on the board’s agenda, KIPP spokesman John Eddy, of New York-based Goldin Solutions, claimed the organization’s three-step reorganization vote was an urgent addition. For days, the organization refused to provide Lamplighter with the official language of the board’s vote.
On Friday evening, OPSB published a copy of the KIPP board’s resolution, certified by its board secretary the day prior. It’s the charter group’s official request to relinquish its charter contract.
Community Voice in School Closures
Each December, New Orleanians and school board members brace themselves for state-issued A-F letter grades. The ratings largely determine which schools will close. It is all but a guarantee that the last board meeting of the year will be standing room only, and include impassioned pleas to save beloved schools from closing.
The community knows school closure is possible each December because the action is published on the board’s agendas.
Last fall it was The Leah Chase School, named after the civil rights icon and famous chef. The board considered closing its only direct-run school and heard hours of public comment on three options for the school. Then came a wave of financial support from the Chase family and a private donor, and amid community calls to save the school, the board committed to keep it open.
Education advocate Ashana Bigard is a New Orleans public schools alumnus and her youngest child is still in the school system. Unlike the Leah Chase vote, most years the closure votes at district headquarters pass uncontested. But Bigard said at least the community can speak to the decision makers.
“It’s unbelievable and it’s so disheartening and frustrating,” she said of KIPP’s unannounced vote. “How are you making these decisions and who is making them? How can I appeal to you?”
KIPP’s vote to close New Orleans’ last Ninth Ward high school was held on the 4th floor of the K&B Plaza building downtown, three miles from the school’s campus.
The timing of KIPP’s vote, after the city’s enrollment application deadline, all but ensures the 600 students enrolled at the closing school will stay in the charter network. In the past, the district has not given students shipped across the city in charter consolidations the same enrollment lottery advantage as students who attend a school that closed for academic reasons.
“Come to the community with strategies. Possible different ways of moving — that's why a community exists so we can put our collective heads together,” Bigard said. “Maybe the parents and community want to take over the charter.”
Sunshine Law Accountability in an All-Charter System
KIPP New Orleans Schools runs nine schools through operating agreements with the Orleans Parish School Board. The board’s administrative arm, NOLA Public Schools, manages the contracts through its accountability department.
“NOLA Public Schools’ Accountability Team is looking into this matter and will follow-up with KIPP New Orleans,” district spokeswoman Taslin Alfonzo told Lamplighter on Saturday.
The district’s charter operating agreements require compliance with the Open Meetings Law, as does OPSB policy.
When charter schools violate state law, federal law, or district policy, the district’s accountability system calls for a series of inquiries and warning letters.
It’s unclear if the district has issued any notice to KIPP.
Asked if KIPP had received an inquiry from the district, the charter network did not respond.
Past violations
This is not the first time NOLA Public Schools has had to examine Open Meetings Law compliance at its charter schools.
In 2022, the district reprimanded James M. Singleton’s charter school board for failing to provide notice of a board meeting. In a warning letter, the district’s then-Accountability Director Litouri Smith, stated any action taken at the meeting was “null and void” per state law.
Smith further wrote that “any action taken during said meetings shall have no legal effect until ratified at a future properly noticed public meeting.”
The public notice portion of state law is the same portion KIPP’s board may have run afoul of — failing to properly notice the meeting. That part of state law requires agenda items be listed individually and with “reasonable specificity.”
A Known Enrollment Decline
For the last five years, public school officials and advocates have openly discussed the city’s enrollment decline. But the nearly-all charter district has taken a back seat approach to school closures.
The district is not approving new charters — but it is not actively closing schools. The district has asked charter groups to consider closures and consolidations — a process that spreads school closure decisions to all corners of the city through 29 independent school boards.
In February, the Orleans Parish School Board heard a new enrollment analysis that concluded more school closures would be needed. That was three weeks before KIPP’s March 12 meeting.
It remains unclear what information KIPP CEO Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise presented at that meeting that prompted such a specific vote, yet couldn’t make it onto the board’s agenda published the day prior. In addition to Kennedy and Douglass, KIPP runs Booker T. Washington High School. It’s unclear how the board decided which two schools to merge.
KIPP’s spokesman said the charter board followed the letter of the law, by voting to amend its agenda to add the closure vote. Boards are allowed to add items mid-meeting, but state law explicitly states the workaround should not “as a subterfuge to” the public’s right to observe deliberations and decisions.
“The KIPP board's choice to add a long-known but controversial issue to the agenda mid-meeting raises serious concerns about exactly that kind of subterfuge,” attorney William Most, of Most & Associates told Lamplighter last week.
What’s next
On Tuesday, the Orleans Parish School Board will consider the resolution KIPP approved at the meeting in question. As it stands, NOLA Public Schools Superintendent Fateama Fulmore has recommended the board approve KIPP’s school consolidation.
All involved parties — the board, district and charter groups — have publicly acknowledged support of general plans to close and consolidate city schools.
The Orleans Parish School Board is no stranger to the tenuous and emotional public meetings that come with closing schools beloved by their students, staff and community. The board often takes hours of public comment during those meetings.
But Tuesday’s vote is also a ratification of transparency in the nearly all-charter school district.
It remains to be seen whether the Orleans Parish School Board will accept KIPP’s resolution, or ask the charter board to hear out the community, as the elected board members regularly do themselves.
