NOLA Public Schools approved three schools -- Morris Jeff Middle School, Audubon Elementary and EQA: New Orleans Accelerated High School -- to move out of their current locations and into school buildings that will be empty at the end of the school year, schools Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. announced on Tuesday.
The buildings will be vacated at the end of this year after the schools currently in them announced they will close in part because of declining enrollment, leaving the school district to reallocate the buildings to schools in too-small or poor-quality facilities.
“We have seen the data that shows fewer children will be entering kindergarten in the coming years and we have to be prepared to face that fact and make adjustments where necessary to continue to provide that high quality public education,” Lewis told the Orleans Parish School Board at a special meeting Tuesday.
IDEA Oscar Dunn and FirstLine Live Oak volunteered to close at the end of the 2021-2022 school year because of low enrollment and Arise Academy was closed because of poor academic performance. That prompted these moves:
- Morris Jeff Middle School grades 5-8, currently in Mid-City, will move to Drew Elementary, located at 3819 St. Claude Ave. in the 9th Ward. Drew Elementary currently houses Arise Academy.
- Audubon Elementary grades 3-8, currently in Uptown, will move to Live Oak Elementary at 3128 Constance St. Live Oak currently houses FirstLine Live Oak.
- EQA: New Orleans Accelerated High School, currently in Uptown, will move to Gaudet Elementary at 12000 Hayne Blvd. in New Orleans East. Gaudet currently houses IDEA Oscar Dunn.
NOLA Public Schools Chief Operating Officer Tiffany Delcour said if EQA chooses to move to Gaudet that would free up their current building for another school.
Delcour stressed the importance of putting schools into buildings that would utilize their full occupancy, pointing out that "capital funding is driven by the number of students served in our buildings."
A number of schools had applied for the open buildings; their applications were ranked by a school district committee.
Little Red Schoolhouse
Among the schools not selected to move was Homer Plessy, which currently occupies the building known as the Little Red Schoolhouse in the French Quarter and is in desperate need of renovation.
Delcour and School Board member J.C. Wagner-Romero, who represents Plessy's district, said they received copious feedback from parents, most of whom said they did not want the school to move.
"Those opinions of our parents are important but the realities are the realities," Delcour said. "Currently that school can only serve about 375 students which barley makes it financially sustainable."
To add an elevator, ADA complaint bathrooms, widen stairwells and other improvements would require removal of interior space and further shrink the number of students the school could fit, making it "completely financially unsustainable." Delcour said immediate necessary upgrades to the school to simply make it watertight would total about $2 million.
"These are some of the realities that we have to face." Delcour said. "They are hard and many people are going to have very strong opinions on these things."
Lewis said there were other schools who need to move but the three open spaces did not fit their programs and they did not apply.
CORRECTION: Earlier versions of this story gave an incorrect current location for Audubon Elementary.