The Lens

A bill that would create a new parole process specifically meant to address the hundreds of people still in Louisiana prisons after being convicted by non-unanimous jury verdicts — which were legal in the state until 2019 — has hit a roadblock in the Louisiana House of Representatives, after amendments pushed by criminal justice reform and civil rights advocates were voted down on the house floor earlier this week.

Applications to enroll in NOLA Public Schools district charter schools — including new students and those seeking transfers — dropped by nearly 30 percent between the 2019-2020 school year and the 2021-2022 school year, according to a report presented to the Orleans Public School Board on Thursday. While some of that can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the upcoming school year has seen a slight recovery, officials and experts believe the overall trend will be downward in the coming years, following a slow-down in the city’s population growth over the past decade, and a more recent decline in the past few years.

The New Orleans City Council is urging Mayor LaToya Cantrell to act quickly to improve the city’s roughly $2 billion roadwork program, and convince FEMA to extend the August 2023 deadline to spend the Hurricane Katrina relief funds that make up the majority of the program. The council made...

The NOLA Public Schools district plans to withhold education funding from Lower 9th Ward charter school group Friends of King Schools over the network’s alleged failure to make repairs to facilities on its Fats Domino Avenue (formerly Caffin Avenue) property, which is owned by the district. NOLA Public Schools...

The New Orleans Office of Inspector General on Wednesday seized the work computer of Christopher Wolff, one of the city employees at the center of the New Orleans City Council’s escalating investigation into alleged self-dealing and contract-rigging in the city’s now-abandoned “smart cities” project. Wolff’s attorney,...

Last November, the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court transferred more than $850,000 of bail and conviction fees paid to the court by criminal defendants over several years to the city of New Orleans. For decades, the court had used those fees to fund its operations. But in 2018, a federal...

Orleans Parish School Board members meeting as a committee on Tuesday advanced a NOLA Public Schools staff recommendation to amend the charter school renewal process to address schools that did not receive state-issued school performance scores while state standardized testing was on hold during the pandemic. The proposals would allow...

On this week’s episode, the city of New Orleans has a little more than a year remaining to spend over $1 billion in Katrina relief funds on infrastructure or it risks losing that money. Meanwhile, government watchdog offices are looking into how the city is managing the program. The...

As a family law professional with over 27 years of experience, one of my main objectives has always been to leave my clients and their children in a better position at the end of a case than they were in at the beginning. This objective has become increasingly more challenging to achieve as a growing number of families enter an already overburdened court system to dissolve relationships and settle conflict. I support the passage of Louisiana House Bill 272 as a first step in creating much-needed oversight and implementing more effective strategies that will reduce the impact of high conflict divorce and custody on both the parents and children trapped in a destructive cycle.

The NOLA Public Schools district is tracking 123 COVID-19 cases in staff and students, according to the district’s latest weekly report, which district officials have confirmed will be the final report of the school year. That represents the fifth straight week of an increase in cases, which falls in...

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday heard oral arguments in a case that could determine the fate of hundreds of prisoners throughout the state who are locked up on non-unanimous jury verdicts, which were legal in the state until 2019 and ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court the following year.

In late 2015, the city of New Orleans and FEMA resolved years of haggling over how much federal relief the city should get to rebuild the sewage systems, water systems and roads damaged following Hurricane Katrina. The settlement allowed the city and the Sewerage and Water Board to launch a roughly $2 billion roadwork project, heralded by then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make a dent in the city’s backlog of dilapidated and pothole-ridden streets.

This Mother’s Day, I will not be with my children. I have not heard the voices of my 14-year-old son and his 12-year-old sister or seen their faces in many, many months. Even as my heart breaks, a phrase repeats in my head like a mantra: The first lie wins. We have been living in the family court system for five long years because of that first lie. Our case shows that when one parent weaponizes the family court system through manipulation and money, the children easily become a cruel form of currency. Access to them is given as a reward for exhibiting desired behaviors; and it is easily withheld as a punishment for perceived grievances.

The Louisiana Supreme Court on Tuesday will hear oral arguments in a 25-year-old murder case that could determine whether hundreds of people still locked up in Louisiana prisons on non-unanimous jury verdicts — two years after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that split verdicts are unconstitutional — are entitled to a new trial.

On this week’s episode, reporter Michael Isaac Stein talks to host Carolyne Heldman about his reporting on the Cantrell administration’s “smart cities” project, which is now under investigation by the New Orleans City Council. Stein discusses what’s happened so far — how the project was pitched...

This story was produced in partnership with Floodlight, the Louisiana Illuminator and The Guardian. Less than a week after a carbon dioxide pipeline operated by Denbury Resources burst in a rural Mississippi community — sending nearly 50 people to the hospital — Louisiana Republican Sen. Sharon Hewitt filed a bill drafted by Denbury into her own state’s legislature.

The New Orleans City Council on Thursday voted to hire an outside investigator to aid in its ongoing probe of Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s controversial and now-abandoned “smart cities” project. Allegations of contract-fixing and self-dealing in the project have ramped up in recent weeks, after it was revealed...

The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education failed to approve a measure that would have temporarily waived a statewide requirement that high school students pass state standardized tests in order to graduate. Had it passed, this would have been the third year the requirement was waived. The state waived...

A state House committee on Tuesday unanimously voted to advance a bill to create a medical advisory panel to oversee healthcare in the state prison system. But amendments adopted by the committee would place prison officials, rather than outside doctors, on the panel and remove some of the panel’s authority.

The NOLA Public Schools district is tracking 112 staff and students COVID-19 cases this week, an increase from the previous week, more than double the 49 cases the district reported last week. Of the 112 cases, 91 are in students and 21 in staff across 24 campuses. Forty of those...