By Aaricka Washington
Word in Black
In the two decades since Hurricane Katrina drowned the city and its public school system, the story of K-12 education in New Orleans has gone something like this: nothing good happened until charter schools, and White reformers, showed up.
But Adrinda Kelly, a New Orleans native, knows that’s not the whole story. The public school teachers she had growing up — most of them Black women — helped prepare her for Harvard University.
“Frankly, our school system wasn’t perfect, but my experience pre-Katrina was a great one,” Kelly says. Her teachers, she says, weren’t just concerned with her grades; they cared for her well-being.
Investing in Black teachers and schools
Now Kelly and her colleague, Stevona Elem-Rogers, are among those working to reclaim that legacy. They are co-leaders of Black Education for New Orleans (BE NOLA) a grassroots nonprofit that invests in Black teachers and promotes Black-led schools to increase the number of Black teachers in New Orleans classrooms.
The goal, Kelly says, is simple: ensure New Orleans’ Black students receive a culturally relevant, high-quality education, like she did. Since post-Katrina reforms, experts say, the city’s teaching workforce has gotten whiter and K-12 test scores have improved, but Black children are still being left behind.
“I think our education system is often pointed to as a model around the potential impact of charter-based reform,” Kelly said. But “there are a lot of people who don’t like what’s going down.”
Altered dynamics
When Hurricane Katrina barreled through New Orleans on Aug. 23, 2005, it killed about 1,400 people, flooded blocks of the mostly Black Lower Ninth Ward, and swept entire houses off their foundations. The storm also altered the city’s dynamics: Tens of thousands of people fled or were displaced, but only about 60 percent have returned, and gentrification has taken hold. As it slowly recovered, New Orleans became smaller, with a larger percentage of white residents.
During the recovery, some civic leaders saw an opportunity to rebuild the city’s troubled school system. They gradually shifted K-12 education from a centralized, traditional public school system to a decentralized charter school system, with a focus on education reform. Part of that transition, however, involved revamping New Orleans’ teaching workforce — including firing more than 4,300 teachers, most of them Black.
The new teaching vanguard looked vastly different. Before Katrina, 71 percent of the city’s public educators were Black; by 2014, only 49 percent of teachers were. Meanwhile, as the overall gains in math and reading scores for city students improved, fewer than one-third of Black fourth graders were reading on grade level,
A community-rooted solution
The BE NOLA founding collective — Dr. Howard Fuller, Elem-Rogers, Andre Perry, Bishop Tom Watson, Stacy Martin, Ashana Bigard, Bill Rouselle, and Jonathan Wilson — built BE NOLA in 2017. It was the brainchild of several community conversations they hosted about building up a thriving education system for Black educators and students.
While some thought the city’s school system was on the right track, “there were people in the room who thought the exact opposite,” says Kelly, BE NOLA’s executive director. “But across that continuum, what they could all see is that neglecting to invest in the capacity, involvement, and leadership of Black educators in New Orleans.”
Elem-Rogers, the chief of community programs and partnerships at BE NOLA, said the group developed a Black manifesto on education that outlined eleven principles centered on self-determination, cultural literacy, and community wellness. The manifesto asserted that while post-Katrina reforms had improved test scores, many Black children are not getting the quality education they deserve.
“And from that Black manifesto, I think people got the understanding that we should be demanding what we want, that we could create a world around it,” she said.
Training the next generation
Kelly said that Black educators in New Orleans who work with BE NOLA learn a range of professional development and leadership skills. The organization collaborates with four to five Black-governed schools — public charter schools as well as private schools — depending on funding. They also offer a Black education curriculum for teachers to gain a deeper understanding of the New Orleans landscape.
Elem-Rogers said even though she is from Birmingham, Alabama, she considers New Orleans home. She moved to the city fresh out of college as a young Teach For America teacher.
Training for BE NOLA participants “has been centered around building an understanding of where they live,” Elem-Rogers said. “A lot of are actually New Orleans natives. You can be from somewhere and still not be very clear about the history of where you’re from, or not be looking at it through a certain lens. And for those who aren’t from New Orleans, it helps them learn about where they’re teaching.”
Elem-Rogers said that 96 percent of their teachers stay in their program.
“It’s exciting to be able to have a space where people can come together and really think about specifically this slice of what’s going on with us,” she says. “How can we make it better? What are some things that we can highlight?”
At a time when the federal government is rolling back efforts to bring diversity to the classroom through funding cuts, Kelly says, BE NOLA can be a powerful counterweight.
“We’re feeling both excited and honored and sort of validated by the number of people and partners who continue to rock with us, whether they’re foundations or individual donors,” Kelly said. “And at the same time, we’re feeling both the direct and indirect effect of the moves against the Department of Ed, which make it more difficult for children who have all kinds of unique needs from underserved neighborhoods to receive the resources they need.”
This article was originally published by Word in Black.
