After lacking a vital step within the renovation of its Leonidas campus, Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans ended up paying greater than $408,000 in property taxes — regardless that public colleges are exempt from such expenses in Orleans Parish.

The pricey error is the form of downside that may happen when novice boards – like people who generally oversee constitution colleges within the metropolis’s decentralized system – are in control of multi-million initiatives, consultants say.

On some native boards the place members cycle out and in and the place authorizers typically present up solely when the constitution is due for renewal, that left Lycée dad and mom, the faculties’ longtime closest scrutinizers, to publicly sound the alarm bells. 

Now, dad and mom are questioning if Lycée officers – and its constitution’s board – are able to taking over any extra monetary outlays. The issues have grow to be heightened in current months, as the college prepares to dip into its monetary reserves to restore the McDonogh 15 French Quarter constructing mothballed by the Orleans Parish College Board. 

In some methods, a location within the historic Vieux Carre neighborhood appears tailored for Lycée, a French-language college with curricula authorised by the French authorities. And Lycée officers now appear to really feel assured about shifting the college’s lower-elementary college students into the “little purple schoolhouse” constructing within the decrease Quarter. A banner held on the college’s St. Philip Road door reads “Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans public constitution college coming quickly.”

The constitution college’s board codified the settlement in January. 

Opinions differ about whether or not the transfer is smart.

Some dad and mom have reservations about whether or not Lycée can correctly deal with – and afford – the renovation of the previous Plessy Neighborhood College, lengthy often called the McDonogh 15 constructing. On high of its pointless property-tax burden, Lycée has already poured a big sum of money into two longtime rental campuses that can now be put aside, they are saying.

To high school district officers grappling with empty seats, declining enrollment, and too many buildings, the settlement with Lycée is a welcome shift. Lycée elementary college students shall be shifting out of an Uptown constructing rented from the Archdiocese of New Orleans and into one of many district’s empty buildings.

Vieux Carre neighbors rejoice, however constructing’s situation unclear

Inside the French Quarter, residents appeared thrilled to see a faculty return to the Quarter. (The final remaining parochial college, the close by St. Louis Cathedral Academy, closed greater than a decade in the past.) In February, an older girl standing on a close-by balcony mentioned she “couldn’t look forward to the children to come back again.”

For years, neighbors, dad and mom, and academics have debated about whether or not OPSB ought to prioritize an lively public college within the French Quarter. Older neighbors typically harken again to the college’s glory days, beginning within the Seventies, when the Quarter was nonetheless an artists’ neighborhood and McDonogh 15 turned famend for its arts training below legendary principal Lucianne Carmichael.

Given its location blocks from the Mississippi River, it was additionally an important high-ground constructing after Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, KIPP McDonogh 15 College for the Inventive Arts moved into the constructing; in 2017, Homer Plessy Neighborhood College took over the house. 

However within the fall of 2022, the district ordered Plessy to maneuver out by the tip of that college yr, due to the constructing’s poor situation. Vieux Carre neighbors begged for the college to stay. Mother and father and faculty leaders additionally protested, arguing training within the Quarter was an expertise that might not be replicated, regardless of slender streets that made pick-ups and drop-offs difficult.

However for OPSB, the high-ground construction was now dispensable, as a result of the district had extra college house than it wanted and the constructing required substantial repairs. By 2022, the district had greater than 3,000 empty seats throughout the 45,000-student district, as scholar declines mirrored nationwide traits. Buildings wanted to be closed, officers mentioned. 

OPSB evaluated all of its buildings and the McDonogh 15 constructing got here up brief. It might price extra to renovate than to exchange fully, evaluators concluded. Then-Superintendent Avis Williams learn the stories and instructed Plessy that the college wouldn’t be capable of return to the campus.

Consolidating its elementary campuses

Lycée Français presently operates three Uptown campuses, two rented and one owned. 

Pre-k to first-grade college students attend lessons on Lycée’s early-learning campus on South Carrollton Avenue, the previous Dr. Ronald E. McNair Elementary College campus, which is owned by OPSB. Older elementary-school college students, grades two by 5, are housed on Patton Road, within the former St. Francis of Assisi College, which Lycée rents from the archdiocese. 

Beginning in sixth grade, college students change to Lycée’s secondary college, the previous Alfred Priestly Junior Excessive on Leonidas Road, which Lycée purchased from OPSB in 2015.

With its new French Quarter campus, Lycée may empty its buildings at McNair and St. Francis of Assisi, putting all of its youthful college students onto one campus, communications director David Jackson mentioned.

By eliminating lease funds at Patton road and upkeep prices at McNair, Lycée would save $900,000 a yr, he mentioned.

Mum or dad Paula Griffin is skeptical of his claims. The constitution spent $200,000 on renovations at McNair, she mentioned, and shouldn’t be so fast to desert that funding – for a construction that requires an unknown stage of repairs, she mentioned. “We don’t truly know what must be accomplished (at Plessy),” Griffin mentioned. “I believe it’s reckless.”

Griffin and different dad and mom who’re vital of the transfer additionally fear that the McDonogh 15 constructing may grow to be a cash pit for Lycée.

On the November OPSB assembly, NOLA Public Colleges chief operations officer Don LeDuff instructed the board that the constructing required an unspecified quantity of upgrades “to enhance the college to the purpose of operations.” 

However as a result of Lycée had provided to pay all of the construction’s restore prices, LeDuff raised the lease as a no-cost decision. OPSB embraced the supply, and cleared the district administration to lease the French Quarter campus. Lycée bears facility restore and upkeep prices, however won’t pay lease, in keeping with the deal.

The ensuing lease is “primarily a no-cost lease, moreover the price for insurance coverage and basic maintenance,” mentioned Jackson, who maintained that not loads of development wanted to be accomplished. “Apart from beauty enhancements, the constructing is move-in prepared.” 

Solely time will inform whether or not renovations grow to be extra intensive, as soon as underway. However definitely, Jackson’s response was incongruous with OPSB’s 2023 assertion that McDonogh 15 was in poor situation, needing at the very least $5 to $10 million in rapid repairs to abate lead and asbestos and seal the constructing’s envelope, stopping water intrusion and mitigating mildew progress.

There are different causes to imagine that Lycée could possibly be overreaching financially, mentioned Griffin, pointing to the administration’s efficiency with its final development challenge, on the former Priestly college that it bought a decade in the past. 

Caught with a property-tax invoice after Priestly campus renovation

In 2015, Lycée’s board of administrators set their sights on the previous Priestly junior excessive constructing on Leonidas Road, to create a flagship campus for the rising college.

However as Griffin sees it, college officers bungled a key a part of the method, placing the college right into a monetary squeeze.

From the beginning, it was clear that the Priestly renovation can be pricey – an estimated $14.6 million to finish. The campus had sat vacant for 22 years. And it was large, encompassing a whole metropolis block, with two brick buildings — one with three tales of school rooms and the opposite a single-story gymnasium constructing.

Lycee, a nonprofit, determined to make use of historic tax credit to assist finance the renovation. As a result of it’s tax-exempt, that required some extra steps.

“A non-profit can’t use tax credit (itself) as a result of they don’t have any tax legal responsibility,” defined Mike Grote, a New Orleans real-estate developer who routinely makes use of historic tax credit to assist finance his initiatives. However to lift the cash wanted for renovations, it’s widespread for nonprofits to promote tax credit at a reduction to traders. Mainly, the traders finance the development in change for tax credit, to offset company tax legal responsibility, he defined.

Lycée did simply that. The college created a sister group, 1601 Leonidas LLC, and transferred the property to the group, which labored as deliberate. They utilized for historic tax credit and lined up traders for them. Then Lycée’s contractors started working to create a stunning secondary-school campus on Leonidas. 

Then got here the essential step that Lycée missed. As soon as the work was full, in June 2022, Lycée officers didn’t switch the constructing again to the possession of Lycée or one other nonprofit. Additionally they didn’t file with the Orleans Parish Assessor’s Workplace in order that Lycée may obtain a tax exemption, like all different metropolis colleges.

If unresolved, these oversights threaten to grow to be main monetary burdens. 

Property taxes usually are not often a burden for charters in Orleans, the place public colleges are exempt from property taxes. However in 2023, the Orleans Parish Assessor’s Workplace despatched Lycée a $400,000 property tax invoice that included curiosity for failing to pay on time. 

The assessor checked out information and didn’t see a tax-exempt entity as proprietor, assessor spokesman Devin Johnson mentioned. Even as we speak – two years later – the previously Priestly campus is listed as a industrial property, owned by 1601 Leonidas LLC. 

And so the thriller continues. Lycée’s secondary-school constructing, which must be tax-exempt, continues to be topic to commercial-property tax assessments – although the property’s annual tax invoice was negotiated down from its $400,000 peak in 2023 to roughly $40,000 lately.

The possession switch ought to have occurred as quickly as development was full, mentioned school-facilities professional Kathy Padian, who’s puzzled by the continued delay.

“They’ve had years because the challenge was completed to switch the asset to a nonprofit,” she mentioned.

Constitution boards typically wrestle with little formal coaching

Mum or dad Paula Griffin, whose daughters are seniors at Lycée, realized to be vital of faculty management throughout years of administrative turmoil when her ladies had been younger, she says. 

Over the following decade, Griffin and one other father or mother, Darren Beltz, confirmed as much as almost each college board assembly, changing into Lycée’s “institutional information,” she mentioned. 

Although the Louisiana Affiliation of Public Constitution Colleges has lately begun to supply board coaching, it had not been uncommon for constitution board members to obtain minimal coaching and oversight. Because it seems, the casual function performed by Griffin and Beltz has been significantly invaluable due to excessive board-member turnover, Griffin mentioned, noting that every new board is continually “attempting to reinvent the wheel and work out what the final board did.”

Griffin takes her casual function critically, having watched what can occur with out correct vigilance and experience, as native charters, particularly single-school charters, have stumbled in a method that makes restoration unattainable. In December, the Delores Taylor Arthur College for Younger Males turned the most recent promising college to close down, because it stared down a $1 million deficit, prompting the superintendent to order its board to give up the college’s constitution mid-year. Her criticisms of Lycée, she says, come from her concern that it, too, may find yourself in a poor monetary place.

From a property perspective, Padian struggled to make sense of the Lycée scenario. Over the previous decade, she has labored on quite a lot of Orleans college initiatives, together with Crescent Metropolis Colleges’ tax-credit-financed redevelopment of Harriet Tubman’s decrease college, a Montessori campus, at 2701 Lawrence St. in Algiers. In Lycée’s case, it seems that the board assumed a job – the tax-credit software and property switch – that exceeded their experience. “The board determined to take that complete transaction on themselves, and now they’ve an issue,” Padian mentioned.

To different property homeowners, the scenario was equally mystifying. Kenneth Ducote, who spent a half-century working with Orleans Parish colleges, mentioned he’d by no means earlier than heard of a faculty receiving a large property tax invoice. 

In an try to know what may have been accomplished in another way, The Lens introduced Lycee’s $400,000 property-tax predicament to leaders within the constitution college world — together with the Nationwide Affiliation of Constitution College Authorizers, the Louisiana Affiliation of Public Constitution Colleges, New Colleges for New Orleans, and members from the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Schooling.

Most officers had been mum. Some mentioned that they didn’t know the specifics of the scenario. Others mentioned that they merely didn’t have a touch upon the story or didn’t really feel snug weighing in. Nonetheless others merely didn’t not return cellphone calls. The spokesperson for the Nationwide Affiliation of Constitution College Operators didn’t wish to remark, however despatched supplies emphasizing that monetary well being falls soundly into the metrics of what authorizers ought to search for within the charters they oversee.

Lycée’s contract was renewed for six years in 2022, so its $400,000 tax fee shall be far behind them by the point that authorizers swoop in to conduct evaluations, to find out whether or not the college’s funds advantage renewal. 

A mistake: ‘An issue of their very own creation’

Although the bill was paid greater than a yr in the past, the Lycée administration has remained tight-lipped about its large tax invoice. 

“Our legal professionals have suggested us to not touch upon this authorized matter as long as it stays in dispute between events,” Jackson, the college’s communications director mentioned.

Information present Lycée’s CEO paid $408,385 to the town’s treasury division in July 2024. The extra $60,000 was curiosity charged on the overdue invoice. 

That fee was made by “Chase McLaurin,” in keeping with metropolis information. 

McLaurin, the college’s CEO, used the town’s on-line portal “to pay the tax invoice from the college’s checking account,” Jackson mentioned.

Lycée officers argue that the property ought to nonetheless qualify for a property tax exemption, as a result of it nonetheless serves as a faculty. Traditionally, a faculty has stood on the Priestly property for a century. 

The college outlined these arguments in a 2023 attraction with the Louisiana Tax Fee. 

The fee dominated in opposition to Lycée, letting the total evaluation stand.

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