The principal for Leah Chase Faculty has resigned from the district’s solely direct-run faculty. 

“Please know that this was not a call I made flippantly,” Principal Crystal LaFrance wrote, in an Oct. 8 letter to the varsity neighborhood.

Regardless of steady teachers and enrollment, faculty proponents say, the sizable funds gaps at Leah Chase Faculty have raised questions concerning the viability of the varsity. 

In early 2024, LaFrance was charged with opening the Leah Chase Faculty, the district’s solely direct-run faculty inside a system that’s in any other case all-charter. It operates out of the previous Lafayette Academy constructing on South Carrollton Avenue.

Within the fall of 2025, the Leah Chase Faculty began its second faculty yr with LaFrance once more on the helm.

It’s unclear what prompted LaFrance’s mid-year resignation. She couldn’t be reached for remark.

A instructor who had labored below LaFrance was puzzled on the improvement, calling her a hardworking and an inspirational chief. 

In 2024, the educator stated, LaFrance had been thrilled with the thought of launching Leah Chase. 

LaFrance echoed that sentiment in Wednesday’s parting letter. “This journey of constructing our college from the bottom up has been one of many best honors of my life,” she wrote.

Sole district-run faculty in a metropolis of charters

In 2019, New Orleans grew to become the primary main American metropolis with no conventional public colleges. 

However 4 years later, within the spring of 2023, after closing the F-rated Lafayette Academy, then-superintendent Avis Williams abruptly reversed her resolution to shutter Lafayette’s constructing. As an alternative, she introduced, the district itself would create and instantly function a brand new faculty inside the grand South Carrollton edifice.

It was renamed after Leah Chase, the late, nice chef and neighborhood chief. 

With out query, Williams acknowledged, it could be troublesome and dear to face up a single faculty in such a short while interval. The district estimated startup prices at $3.8 million. 

However Williams and her workers on the district appeared decided, working with LaFrance and different newly employed faculty leaders to swiftly carry on a workers of extremely regarded veteran academics and to create an arts-integrated curriculum worthy of the varsity’s namesake.

The brand new faculty launched with kindergarten by means of fifth grade, dropping the middle-school grades that Lafayette Academy had supplied, with a plan so as to add again the grades one yr at a time. The staggered begin has typically been used with brand-new constitution colleges in New Orleans; it’s sometimes described as a “slow-growth faculty.”

However fewer grades meant fewer college students — and fewer per-pupil revenue.

In September, district officers reported to the Orleans Parish Faculty Board that the varsity’s working funds would finish the varsity yr $500,000 within the pink. 

Knowledge present that the varsity’s teachers and enrollment appear steady. Leah Chase completed out its first faculty yr with 284 college students. This yr, it added sixth grade and employed a further two academics. Its enrollment grew to 354, in accordance with an worker. 

However an uncommon proportion of the brand new college students had particular wants, in accordance with a district worker who feared retribution if their title was used. It seems the district was caught off guard by the necessity for six specialised instructors, together with three paraprofessionals and two particular training academics. “Positions have been added to adjust to legislative necessities or necessities recognized inside a pupil’s IEP,” the September report acknowledged.

Earlier than Hurricane Katrina, the district had particular training academics who labored out of the central workplace to serve college students with specialised wants all through the town. However that large-scale centralized assist doesn’t exist in at the moment’s system of charters. 

So beginning up Leah Chase Faculty required beginning up a wholly new special-education division as nicely. Because the district has seen earlier than, if a brand new faculty will get a status of doing nicely with special-needs college students, it typically attracts extra college students with IEPs. That may be a wrestle within the decentralized district.

Unfulfilled Guarantees

To dwell as much as its namesake’s legacy, the varsity would undertake a trailblazing mission, NOLA Public Faculties introduced in February 2024: “It aspires to be greater than an academic establishment; it goals to develop into a beacon of cultural richness, amplifying the voice of New Orleans’ historical past.”

“The varsity’s complete method will embody alternatives for golf equipment, area journeys, and enriching programs similar to arts and tradition, music, bodily training, and social and emotional assist,” the district introduced. “Native partnerships will additional improve the tutorial expertise, honoring the legacy of Leah Chase and the wealthy historical past and traditions of New Orleans.”

Initially, the varsity brimmed with tradition, together with programming by the New Orleans Ballet Affiliation and the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Basis. There have been partnerships with native artwork museums and Studio B, with KIDsmART and STEM NOLA.

This yr, to accommodate a tightened funds, the “beacon of cultural richness” has dimmed. 

The varsity now presents no extracurriculars — no sports activities, no arts, no tutoring — in accordance with the district supply, who couldn’t title a single arts program that also existed inside the Leah Chase constructing.

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