Good morning! ☕️
Well. I did not expect to be launching this site with hard news and publish four stories in six days. But I couldn’t sit on my hands after I learned a charter group voted to close a high school with no invitation, let alone warning, from its governing body to students, families, staff and the community to weigh in on a monumental decision in their lives.
KIPP says the closure was unanticipated but urgent — even though the charter group hired a crisis-communications firm more than a month prior to the vote.
I spoke with a 17-year-old junior last week who is in the top ten of her KIPP high school class. She wants to know if she’ll lose her status when the schools combine, what will happen to the other high school’s top ten students and how their ranks will appear on their transcripts for college applications. Those are questions she didn’t get to ask administrators.
This reporting truly brought me back to my roots as a charter school reporting corps member with The Lens in 2011. Like those days, I think this work will continue to help move the needle on transparency in the city’s decentralized school district. (I was on TV twice) I’m grateful WWLTV picked up the news, including taking the late-night shift Thursday.
There are more city school closures to come amid declining enrollment and law requires these decisions and deliberations occur in front of the public.
In this newsletter, I plan to highlight education, climate and health news. A lot of my reporting has focused on special education — here are two special education stories to follow: a house bill and a big court decision.
--In Louisiana, when a family and school disagree about special education, it falls on the family to prove the school failed to properly serve their child. A new bill would dramatically change that power dynamic and shift the burden of proof in special education disputes to the school system. You can read my story in the Louisiana Illuminator.
--Literally just in: A U.S. District Court judge has released the Louisiana Department of Education and Orleans Parish school district from federal monitoring of special education services. The agencies have been under a consent decree for 11 years.
A little background on the special education consent decree:
I’m sure I’ll have reporting to add so stay tuned.
Two weeks into Lamplighter, I am incredibly grateful for the support, shares, subscribers and encouragement.
I don’t exactly know the future of this site. I envision stories/entries/interviews about the intersections of education, climate, health and infrastructure. Incremental reporting and first drafts of history.
The KIPP series fits the bill.
I welcome your feedback.
Thanks for reading ~ See you soon,
Marta
