It’s change into an all-too-familiar lament in New Orleans that the constitution college system lacks accountability and transparency. Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans (LFNO), the place three of my 5 kids are enrolled, has lengthy been caught in a tug-of-war between the administration and the neighborhood they’re presupposed to serve. 

Lately, this stress reached a breaking level.

Earlier this summer time, I used to be blocked from the varsity’s Fb web page after calling out college directors for what I imagine to be union-busting techniques — firing a number of academics, together with your entire English division, and refusing to pay them what they had been owed. My criticism was legally protected, however I discovered myself within the place of getting to rent a lawyer to power the varsity to revive my entry to the varsity’s public Fb web page. As a substitute of addressing my considerations, college officers determined to silence me. This blatant disregard for the First Modification is, sadly, simply the tip of the iceberg.

The issue isn’t simply at LFNO. It’s systemic. 

Constitution colleges in New Orleans claimed to supply one thing totally different: extra innovation, extra responsiveness, and extra accountability. However what we obtained as a substitute are miniature fiefdoms the place leaders make the foundations, break them when it fits them, after which act offended when dad and mom like me dare to ask for solutions.

Take the newest LFNO Board of Administrators assembly on September twenty fourth. They allowed one of many board members to take part nearly to fulfill quorum necessities—one thing that, beneath state regulation, ought to have triggered a complete set of extra transparency measures, none of which had been adopted. They didn’t present a method for folk to remark electronically, failed to supply fundamental participation directions, and deleted the video recording of the assembly that was presupposed to be obtainable for 2 years. This wasn’t a public assembly — it was a sham.

All of that is taking place beneath the watch of CEO Chase McLaurin, who appears extra excited about asserting management than fostering a wholesome college neighborhood. 

I’ve all the time believed in addressing individuals as they want to be addressed–it’s a matter of fundamental respect. I name LFNO’s CEO “Dr. McLaurin” as a result of that’s what he’s requested to be referred to as and he’s earned his credentials. However for years, our college addressed employees and academics utilizing the honorific Madame/Monsieur adopted by their first names. Some on the college prolonged this follow to incorporate him, displeasing Dr. McLaurin, who has now carried out a inflexible insistence on formal titles and final names. 

However as a result of Dr. McLaurin doesn’t prolong his insistence on respectful types of handle to everybody, it feels extra like an try to strengthen authority than a real push for professionalism. 

Personally, I’m uncomfortable with being addressed utilizing gendered titles. He refuses to supply that very same respect to me, although I’ve made my choice clear to him. It’s petty, it’s merciless, and it’s completely pointless.

This disregard for others’ experiences and desires is a part of a broader sample of institutional racism and systemic misogyny that permeates the tradition at LFNO. 

Educating is an overwhelmingly feminine occupation, and girls are sometimes the dad and mom who advocate most fiercely for schoolchildren. But, at each flip, our considerations are dismissed or ignored. 

Nowhere is that this extra evident than in the way in which the administration has dealt with the instructor unionization effort. Greater than 80% of the eligible employees voted to affix the United Lecturers of New Orleans final yr. However slightly than accepting that call, the board has finished every thing it could actually to keep away from negotiating a contract. In the meantime, board members are unilaterally pushing by adjustments to salaries and handbooks with zero enter from the academics who educate our children. 

The message is obvious: the administration doesn’t care in regards to the employees’s rights or wellbeing, they usually actually don’t care about sustaining any semblance of transparency or equity.

The college is now seeing tangible results of this hostile surroundings. The decrease college principal abruptly left final week, and academics are leaving in droves. Households like mine are significantly contemplating pulling our youngsters out as a result of LFNO has deserted the immersion curriculum we signed up for. As a substitute is a test-centered strategy that prioritizes Dr. McLaurin’s bonus over what’s finest for our children. 

We didn’t join a college that’s targeted on ensuring our children check effectively. We signed up for a spot that valued holistic schooling, the place youngsters had been immersed in language and tradition, not standardized check prep.

Dad and mom and college students confirmed up at the newest board assembly to speak in regards to the college’s restrictions on toilet use, which have led to youngsters wetting themselves, getting urinary tract infections, and even bleeding by their garments as a result of they couldn’t are inclined to their menstrual wants. 

One mum or dad, a Black girl, defined that she wasn’t allowed to carry her kindergartener again into the varsity to make use of the restroom at dismissal—after her little one had already moist herself twice on automobile rides residence as a result of she wasn’t allowed to go in the course of the day. But, moments later, two white dad and mom had been let in with out query. 

The administration’s response? They denied the coverage even existed, and when dad and mom insisted it was an actual difficulty, they had been advised to take it up some place else. 

Then, in a really weird flip, Dr. McLaurin used a current college taking pictures in Georgia as a justification for this ridiculous coverage. He actually advised a room filled with shocked dad and mom, “There was a taking pictures in Georgia per week in the past. You understand the place that child needed to go? The toilet.” 

As if denying kids fundamental bodily wants is an answer to violence in colleges.

This isn’t nearly LFNO. That is what occurs when individuals accountable for constitution colleges don’t need to reply to anybody however themselves. 

The entire constitution system wants to vary. We’d like actual oversight. We’d like boards that really hearken to the communities they serve. And we want leaders who care extra about our children than about their very own egos and backside strains.

I would like LFNO to succeed. I would like my kids to thrive right here. I would like all Louisiana colleges to succeed too, so that everybody’s kids can thrive.

However I’m not prepared to attend round and hope issues get higher on their very own. We’d like change, and we want it now. Our youngsters, at LFNO and throughout the state, deserve higher. And we as dad and mom have the best to demand it.

Sarah Stickney Murphy has 5 kids, three of whom are college students at Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans. The proud product of unionized pre-Katrina Orleans Parish public colleges, she holds a bachelor’s diploma in music and an MBA from Loyola College of New Orleans. At the moment, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Justice Research whereas serving as an adjunct teacher on the College of New Orleans, the place her analysis focuses on labor organizing and the intersections of race, class, and gender within the cultural economic system of New Orleans. For the final twenty years, she has labored in fund growth, to assist construct the capability of Black and Brown-led racial equity-focused nonprofit organizations.

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