Desegregating a New Orleans public highschool
In 1960, 4 six-year-old Black women, flanked by U.S. Marshals, desegregated two New Orleans public colleges. Seven years later, Black college students have been lastly in a position to enter John McDonogh Senior Excessive College.
Within the fall of 1967, Pam Matthews was one of many first Black college students to stroll the hallways of the John Mac, as the varsity is thought. A robust scholar, Matthews centered on lecturers, however made buddies dressed within the faculty’s signature inexperienced and yellow colours – as a cheerleader, on the dance staff as a Trojanette, and in drama membership.
Although she had attended sturdy colleges inside the Black group, Matthews may see that there have been extra assets and freedom inside John McDonogh, a college that had been constructed and operated for white college students. And the varsity supplied a wealth of extracurriculars. “John Mac didn’t miss a beat when it got here to social issues for the children to do,” Matthews mentioned.
The books have been nicer – “new and gently used” – now not well-used books that have been generally hand-me-downs from white colleges. And her class sizes have been undoubtedly smaller than comparable lessons in native Black excessive colleges, which have been overflowing with college students on the time.
But analysts say that these inequities aren’t a factor of the previous in New Orleans. The types of inequities that have been starkly obvious in 1967 inside an formally segregated faculty system nonetheless stubbornly persist inside New Orleans colleges, even 20 years after the reforms applied after Hurricane Katrina, within the nation’s most drastic training experiment.
At this time, nearly all native white college students are clustered in a small subset of public colleges described as “concentrated benefit” colleges by a groundbreaking, year-long evaluation launched in 2019 by the Higher New Orleans Basis. Within the remaining colleges, college students are nearly totally Black, with excessive ranges of financial drawback.
Former Superintendent Henderson Lewis Jr. described it as “this bifurcated system.”
Few locations higher illustrate the story of those persistent inequities than John McDonogh Senior Excessive College, the place desegregation triggered a long time of infrastructure and educational neglect that weren’t reversed till the constructing reopened as Bricolage Academy, a k-8 constitution faculty with a considerably whiter scholar physique.
Selecting between John Mac and Clark
In 1968, half a mile away, a 12 months after Matthews walked into John McDonogh, Deborah Richardson enrolled in Joseph S. Clark Excessive College. She couldn’t see herself attending John McDonogh, which was “lily white” on the time, she mentioned. So she selected Clark.
On the time, ninth graders in downtown New Orleans have been supplied a alternative between two excessive colleges, in two distinctly totally different sixth Ward buildings.
There was John McDonogh Senior Excessive College, a grand brick constructing on Esplanade Avenue, which was designed for white college students by E.A. Christy, the varsity district’s celebrated architect.
Seven blocks in direction of the river stood the far more plain constructing that housed Clark, which opened its door in 1947, as the primary highschool for Black college students beneath Canal Road.
Traditionally, the New Orleans faculty district was a twin system: highschool college students have been assigned by race to neighborhood/district faculty buildings that have been designated for both white or Negro college students.
For the last decade earlier than desegregation started in New Orleans, colleges for white college students operated under-capacity whereas Black colleges have been overflowing. In response, the New Orleans public colleges instituted a “platoon” system for Black college students. In any respect-Black colleges like Clark, college students rotated days and begin instances to keep away from overcrowding school rooms. Within the Fifties, Clark enrolled 2,000 college students, with 1,000 attending lessons throughout every platoon.
As a white faculty, John Mac had loads of area and by no means was required to platoon.
At Clark, Richardson spent half of highschool divided into platoons, divided into teams with staggered begin instances. She additionally discovered Black excellence in lecturers from Black academics, she mentioned. She specialised in vo-tech profession lessons, taking dwelling economics to be taught extra about styling hair and dealing as a seamstress – trades that might outline her life.
She got here to Clark from the Lafitte public housing improvement, the place her household moved when she was an adolescent. The Lafitte was stuffed with kids, enjoying in shared courtyards. “ We’d grasp on the again of vehicles and catch rides on our skates. We’d construct skate mobiles,” she recalled. “We made ropes out of four-leaf clovers.” She quickly discovered that she was good together with her palms. She would knock on her neighbor’s door when she heard the stitching machine hearth up. Early on, she transitioned to styling hair. “ I began doing hair as a younger youngster within the initiatives as a result of I needed to do my little sister’s hair,” she mentioned.
Neighbors would come to her Lafitte courtyard so Richardson may fashion their hair. “They’d shampoo it at dwelling and are available and convey their rollers and I might roll it, you already know, as finest I may. I bought actually good at it.”
Graduating from two Black excessive colleges, Clark and John Mac
Matthews enrolled at John McDonogh as a result of her mom insisted. Because the eldest daughter, “I did as I used to be advised,” she mentioned.
Coming into John Mac was a stark distinction from her earlier all-Black colleges, Valena C. Jones, Andrew J. Bell, and Rivers Fredrick. She doesn’t keep in mind any white college students at her major faculty, even after desegregation efforts started. She entered John Mac with different Black friends, many who lived within the St. Bernard public housing improvement and would cross close to her home on Annette Road within the seventh Ward as they walked to highschool.
Her mom shielded her from any of the flashpoints that surrounded integration, she mentioned. So the bigger social forces weren’t prime of thoughts for her. “I didn’t perceive integrating all that a lot.”
Throughout Matthews’ 4 years, the varsity flipped racially. “It was 90% white once we bought there and by the point we graduated it was 95% Black. I can keep in mind possibly 10 white children graduating with us.”
She graduated within the class of 1972 and went to Delgado Neighborhood School to check nursing.
Richardson graduated from Clark in 1971 and started working at Raymond’s Magnificence Provide, a neighborhood distributor. As hair merchandise have been launched, she would show the brand new merchandise for stylists.
After a Jheri curl demonstration for college kids at L.E. Rabouin Vocational Excessive College, trainer Merle Morvant requested Richardson if she’d be keen to show. Even now, she will be able to keep in mind what Morvant advised her. “ She mentioned, ‘I actually love the best way you dealt with this, this complete scenario. The women got here in, you advised ’em what you was was anticipated of them, they usually listened to you.’”
Morvant urged that Richardson comply with her expertise even additional. “ Why don’t you come to summer season faculty?” she requested Richardson. “‘You ever thought of instructing cosmetology?’”
She was bought. It was her probability, she mentioned, to information younger college students alongside the identical vocational-education profession path she’d adopted since her days at Clark.
Constructing a program in a “faculty of final resort.”
Richardson was employed by John Mac in 1982 and shortly developed a full instructing program inside a custom-made salon constructed inside the constructing.
In 1975, U.S. District Decide Herbert W. Christenberry had ended the longtime desegregation lawsuit in Orleans Parish, ruling that the courtroom’s orders over the earlier 23 years had resulted within the “substantial elimination of the results of previous discrimination,” he wrote.
But integration eluded John Mac, the place the coed physique was nearly totally Black throughout her decades-long profession on the faculty, Richardson mentioned.
Her program was famend throughout the town for its profitable graduates and cautious instructing. Each scholar of hers acquired a Styrofoam head and styled hair on it, increase their required hours till they may cross the state board exams every spring. For 30 years, from her one-of-a-kind John Mac classroom, she helped to mould hairdressers who knew the right way to fashion, inventory high-quality merchandise and run companies that supported their households.
Richardson grew to become a widely known pressure with the town’s public colleges, due to her experience and since she may relate to what college students have been combating. She’d lived in the identical areas, knew most of the identical households, and had been a younger father or mother who struggled to pay payments. College students inside the John Mac program moved ahead due to Richardson’s signature mix of encouragement, robust love, and deep expertise inside her area.
However within the late Nineteen Nineties, Richardson mentioned the varsity started to vary. John McDonogh grew to become a kind of faculty of final resort. District officers, she mentioned, gave college students who bought in bother two choices: “You possibly can go to various faculty or you may go to John Mac.”
That modified the dynamic of the varsity. As a substitute of the teams of buddies who’d grown up collectively downtown, college students from throughout the town landed on Esplanade Avenue. College students from uptown and downtown combined, which nervous her.
Within the spring of 2003, on the day she took her college students to the state cosmetology examination in Baton Rouge, two males rushed within the gymnasium door armed with a pistol and an AK-47.
“ They got here within the door taking pictures, taking pictures within the air, taking pictures within the ceiling, bullets ricocheting off, hurting two college students, one within the leg and one some place else, and all of this is happening,” Richardson mentioned. A 15-year-old scholar, Jonathan “Caveman” Williams, was hit by 10 bullets and killed. `
Her husband, Harold Richardson, additionally a trainer, was there. “He didn’t have a clue till he heard the primary shot. Then they shot the little boy whereas he was sitting within the gymnasium.” The coed tried to stand up, solely to be shot once more, she mentioned.
Floodlines
Retaliatory violence wasn’t unusual in New Orleans neighborhoods, Richardson mentioned, who discovered it was nerve-wracking to have it cross the road into a college constructing.
With elevated safety, faculty continued on. However afterward, it appeared just like the brazen act made the varsity’s downward trajectory nearly a certainty. John Mac continued to be outlined by the taking pictures even a decade later.
Richardson saved a detailed watch on her college students and continued her repute for excellence on her personal. However as the varsity 12 months started in August 2005, a brand new trainer was attempting to vary the cosmetology curriculum. After a very tense assembly on Friday, August 26, Richardson emerged, ready to combat for her program.
As a substitute, Katrina hit Florida, then headed to New Orleans, gathering power because it moved. “Sunday, we needed to evacuate. It was necessary evacuation,” she mentioned. “Katrina got here and we couldn’t come dwelling.”
Life had modified endlessly for New Orleanians. However when John Mac re-opened, she knew her title can be one of many first in folks’s thoughts. “So long as the varsity had a cosmetology program, I used to be gonna be there,” she mentioned. “If I wasn’t there, they wasn’t gonna don’t have any program.”
The post-Katrina combat
In June of 2006, Richardson returned to a devastated New Orleans. As she bumped into former neighbors and college students, she doled out hugs and encouragement. She knew the trail to rebuild can be an extended one.
Although 80% of the town had flooded, with defective levees that burst throughout the town, excessive floor areas, like Esplanade Ridge, stayed largely dry. So the grand previous John McDonogh constructing sustained minor harm. It reopened for the 2006-07 faculty 12 months to college students from throughout the town. Nonetheless, the district had not invested within the faculty for many years, Richardson mentioned. After years of deferred upkeep, the home windows leaked, elements of the basement had flooded. Its facade sorely wanted a facelift.
As a substitute of a facelift, your complete faculty system went underneath the knife.
By the point Richardson returned, the state’s fast conversion of New Orleans colleges into charters was nicely underway. The varsity district negotiated a landmark $2 billion FEMA settlement to rebuild and renovate its buildings, giving the town maybe the latest fleet of colleges within the nation via a development increase that created state-of-the-art buildings, doubtless essentially the most undisputed constructive side of the post-Katrina faculty reforms.
Whereas residents have been nonetheless displaced, the state legislature had acted rapidly — altering state regulation to permit the state to take management of New Orleans’ public colleges. The state-run Restoration College District (RSD) took over greater than 100 of the district’s 120-some colleges, together with John McDonogh. New Orleans academics have been fired en masse. With out college students, who have been additionally displaced, the district had no per-pupil funding to pay academics.
But after Katrina, Richardson would see faculty leaders reject each beliefs that she held pricey. As colleges re-opened underneath the auspices of the state and newly contracted constitution operators, she noticed how Black academics have been much less readily employed. Plus, the general public faculty focus moved nearly totally to lecturers, with none room for the trades that had lengthy been a staple of training and life-skills inside the metropolis of New Orleans.
As college students returned, the RSD instituted new necessities. To be re-hired, academics, even those that had been within the classroom for many years, needed to take exams – which contained many questions from 4th-grade LEAP exams, some academics reported. . After being fired, some veteran academics have been reluctant to return. People who did apply have been typically regarded over in favor of younger academics straight out of faculty. On faculty facades throughout city, constitution operators additionally modified historic names, leaving few traces of pre-Katrina New Orleans colleges.
The general public-school workforce flipped nearly totally, from a college system outlined by Black profession educators, many with a long time of expertise, to new faculty grads, largely white, who have been recruited to work in New Orleans colleges, although many had by no means earlier than run a classroom. “There wasn’t hardly any veteran academics, hardly any black academics, you already know, simply younger white folks,” Richardson mentioned. “It was only a large cultural change. I might drive to highschool and see these little vehicles from all of the totally different states up north,” she mentioned. “They employed all these younger folks and most of them have been white.”
In later years, system directors labored to extend numbers of Black and New Orleanian-native academics, after continued criticism from mother and father coupled with analysis exhibiting that Black college students have been extra profitable when taught by Black academics.
From the beginning, Richardson’s intestine advised her that such dramatic shifts have been unhealthy for traumatized college students recovering from a catastrophe, who as an alternative wanted consistency. “This isn’t gonna work,” she recalled saying to herself. “You understand, this isn’t gonna work.”
John Mac as the one choice
Kareem Kennedy grew up within the seventh Ward as one in every of 9 kids. Raised by his aunt Alice, he attended Langston Hughes for elementary and F.W. Gregory for center faculty. After failing standardized checks, he’d been pressured to repeat fourth grade.
He rebounded academically and was optimistic in August 2005 as he headed to John F. Kennedy Excessive College subsequent to Metropolis Park. However he would solely attend faculty for 2 weeks — Kennedy’s campus was left deluged by floodwater after Katrina, its constructing slated for demolition. Kennedy recounted his education in a e book, Aunt Alice vs. Bob Marley, printed by the Neighborhood Story Undertaking. After the storm, he boarded a bus to Houston with a pal.
In Texas, he’d seen a special actuality. He attended lessons in a Houston highschool that felt like a school campus, he mentioned. He and several other buddies enrolled there. He took enterprise regulation, typing, and different lessons he hadn’t dreamed of in New Orleans.
However outdoors of faculty, the displaced kids confronted hurdles. “I had quite a lot of buddies who have been type of elevating ourselves, like me,” he mentioned, “as a result of a few of our mother and father and guardians went again to New Orleans and have been attempting to determine issues out and get trailers and get stuff set as much as get again dwelling.”
In 2007, he returned to New Orleans, transferring into his cousin’s FEMA trailer. “ Town was mainly a skeleton of its previous self,” Kennedy mentioned, describing the massive X’s spray-painted onto properties by emergency personnel looking for survivors.
When he went to the varsity district to enroll in highschool, he was given one alternative — John McDonogh.
He knew in regards to the faculty’s repute and the health club taking pictures. However he had no different choices, with most different excessive colleges ruined by floodwaters. On his first day on Esplanade Avenue, he discovered blue-shirted safety officers standing at consideration outdoors the varsity’s gate.
It appeared pointless, he mentioned. “That they had NOPD in there, had the metallic detectors — it was only a complete ordeal simply getting via the gate,” he mentioned. For these already combating anxiousness, it appeared to make all the things worse, he mentioned. The coed physique additionally included college students from all throughout city. Fights have been the anticipated outcome.
The legislature had moved rapidly to assemble a special faculty system. Nevertheless it hadn’t thought-about that the kids who would return to New Orleans colleges have been severely traumatized by a catastrophe that had not solely left 1,000 folks useless however had given the nation an image of extreme poverty and chaos. That made enterprise homeowners reluctant to rent displaced New Orleanians and gave fodder to schoolchildren in different cities, a few of whom advised displaced kids to “swim dwelling.”
Now, it appeared just like the metal-detector clad colleges have been set as much as scan returning New Orleans kids, not embrace them. “We have been actually youngsters going via a traumatic factor,” Kennedy mentioned. The world “didn’t consider what simply occurred, like what we, our mother and father have been experiencing. What the town was experiencing.”
The constitution operator who turned John Mac right into a actuality TV present
Richardson weighed her choices, utilized to the RSD and was employed. In 2006, she returned to Esplanade Avenue and restarted a cosmetology program with 5 Uptown college students from Walter L. Cohen Excessive College; 5 from McDonogh 35 within the seventh Ward; and a handful of returning college students from John McDonogh.
However state officers wished handy off colleges to constitution operators. One of many out-of-town operators who expressed curiosity was Steve Barr, who had 20 colleges underneath his oversight in Los Angeles. He gained a contract to run John Mac via a newly created entity referred to as Future is Now Colleges (FINS) after which opened the campus to an Oprah Winfrey Community actuality TV present, referred to as “Blackboard Wars,” which described John Mac as one of many “most harmful” excessive colleges within the nation.
In hindsight, it appeared as if Barr was much less thinking about serving to disaster-worn kids get better and extra thinking about exploiting the negatives of John Mac’s historical past for a tv viewers.
To Richardson, the untested, out-of-state group “hijacked” the New Orleans faculty. Barr had no understanding of the position of trades inside a tutorial setting, Richardson recalled. At one level, he’d advised her, “We don’t need cosmetology, we don’t need cosmetologists, we wish cosmetology enterprise homeowners.’” Richardson scoffs on the reminiscence. “He wished these kids to personal a enterprise earlier than they get outta highschool – once they can’t even learn.”
Whereas underneath Barr’s oversight, John Mac struggled with enrollment and funds. Regularly cancelled constitution board conferences shielded the constitution group from public scrutiny.
The varsity did not enroll sufficient college students to fulfill its price range. It struggled academically, and earned one of many lowest state scores ever doled out — 9.5 out of 150 factors.
In 2014, on the finish of its second 12 months underneath the Future is Now, the district closed the fledgling faculty, citing a necessity for restores. The superintendent of the RSD on the time, Patrick Dobard, centered his feedback on the constructing — not the scholars inside it. “Dashing up this renovation will assist to hurry up the day when college students can profit from a world-class training on the John McDonogh Excessive College facility,” he mentioned.
Alumni cried foul in regards to the guise for restore. The Orleans Parish College Board and Restoration College District fought in courtroom about which company would reopen a college within the constructing.
Richardson, too, believed the pressing renovation reasoning was a smokescreen. After 30 years, she packed up her desk and walked out the door, realizing it was the tip.
“I used to be there endlessly,” Richardson mentioned, remembering all the previous colleagues who left her to retire or train elsewhere. “They went, did this and I used to be nonetheless there.” So she knew that her strolling away in 2014 despatched a transparent sign to everybody. “That was the final day of John McDonogh Excessive College.”
Kareem Kennedy made the most effective of it at John Mac. In 2008, he’d donned the gold and inexperienced and graduated as a Trojan. Now, he lives out of city, partly as a result of the modifications to his hometown have been simply an excessive amount of, he mentioned.
Six years later, when John McDonogh closed, he was unhappy, he mentioned. However he wasn’t essentially shocked. With out its longstanding academics and neighborhood children, it now not had a throughline to the town, he mentioned. With the fixed churn of the varsity system, he didn’t even know if his elementary faculty was open or in what form or type. (It’s, working out of a brand-new constructing in Gentilly operated by constitution operator FirstLine Colleges.)
Actually, a few of what occurred at John Mac is a part of bigger forces. The constructing that when housed Clark, Richardson’s alma mater, was additionally taken over by Morris-Jeff, one other one of many metropolis’s concentrated-advantage colleges. Throughout New Orleans, the constitution motion introduced numerous consideration — and out of doors funding.
Town has modified too. Whereas New Orleans continues to be a majority-black metropolis, the proportion of Black inhabitants has fallen from 67% pre-Katrina to 56%, whereas the share of white residents grew from 28% to 31%, and the variety of Hispanic residents tripled, from 3% to 9%, based on 2024 U.S. Census knowledge.
Regardless of all of the reforms and recruitment efforts, many of the metropolis’s white public faculty college students attend roughly a dozen colleges, within the cluster of “concentrated benefit” colleges that have been described within the 2019 Higher New Orleans Basis research.
Ten years in the past, one other research examined the racial dynamics of the New Orleans constitution faculty system and located the identical inequities.
The research, achieved by the Stanford Heart for Alternative Coverage in Schooling, discovered that 89% of white college students and 73% of Asian college students – together with 24% of Black college students – attend this subset of colleges, which the Stanford research described as “Tier 1” colleges, which frequently carry faculty rankings of As and Bs. Against this, the remainder of colleges are greater than 90% Black and carry decrease faculty rankings.
Behind the racial dynamics are instructional inequities. Colleges with extra Black and economically deprived college students have extra inexperienced academics, who go away at larger charges annually, based on the Higher New Orleans Basis 2019 research. Additionally, in comparison with the town’s dozen “concentrated benefit”/Tier 1 colleges, the remaining colleges are far much less more likely to provide overseas language or advanced-placement lessons.
Actually, earlier than Katrina, New Orleans colleges have been additionally largely segregated and unequal – and a few educators and advocates on the town have pushed efficiently lately to rent extra Black academics, tweak enrollment formulation, and to provide extra funding to colleges that enroll pupils with larger wants – all with an eye fixed to creating issues extra honest.
However there was a special sense of group earlier than Katrina, says Kennedy, who describes in the present day’s colleges because the “skeletons” of group programs that have been washed away after the storm. “These public establishments and these neighborhoods, this stuff are generational, cultural, and quite a lot of that bought erased within the floodwaters, he mentioned.”
Bricolage brings the constructing again to life
At some point just a few years after she’d left, Deborah Richardson drove previous the John Mac constructing on her approach dwelling from instructing at a close-by faculty. As she drove alongside Esplanade, she observed a piece crew outdoors, pressure-washing the sleek previous John McDonogh constructing.
She cried.
For her complete profession, the constructing’s exterior had been lined with mould, mildew and filth, Richardson mentioned. “All of these years I used to be there. We begged them to pressure-wash the constructing.” However now that the varsity was now not John McDonogh Excessive, officers discovered the cash to do it, she mentioned.
Then the district went additional and renovated your complete constructing for a brand new constitution faculty, Bricolage Academy, an elementary faculty; the retrofit for youthful college students made the challenge much more costly. Bricolage opened for college kids in 2018.
The constructing regarded beautiful. Some Trojan alums got here by to take a peek. However Richadson didn’t need a tour. “ They couldn’t get me to step foot in there, as a result of I believed that was only a slap within the face.”
Some John Mac alumni are glad that the John Mac constructing now not homes a college of “final resort.” Nearly in a single day, Bricolage grew to become a concentrated-advantage faculty. The beginning-up constitution additionally ranked tenth within the metropolis this 12 months for what number of of its college students earned “mastery” stage on Louisiana state standardized checks. Bricolage additionally constantly receives one of many highest numbers of purposes from mother and father making use of for kindergarten spots for his or her kids inside the system’s annual lottery system.
Bricolage began from kindergarten, including a grade annually till it grew to become a full k-8 faculty.
Bricolage’s scholar physique additionally features a bigger proportion of Black kids than many different concentrated-advantage colleges. In 2024, 66% of Bricolage’s college students have been Black, decrease than the 74% common throughout the district.
That variety is what idealists had hoped for when integration started. Even so, the “numerous by design” mannequin at Bricolage has all the time felt exclusionary to advocate Ashana Bigard on its face — as a result of a majority of the town’s college students are Black.
Bigard’s son attended Bricolage. Pam Matthews’ grandson additionally went there for some time.
However each time Bigard walked her son via the grand Esplanade Avenue doorways, she remembered how the varsity constructing regarded when it was John Mac – and the way it seems now.
“The quantity of funding was evening and day,” Bigard mentioned. “It wasn’t there when it was an all-Black faculty.”
A number of years in the past, as the varsity was making ready to open, Richardson had a granddaughter able to enter faculty. However she didn’t need her attending Bricolage, she determined.
The modifications nonetheless harm Richardson deeply, each time she drives close to the previous Trojan Fortress.
“After I cross there, I roll my eyes and my coronary heart skips a beat — as a result of I understand what they did to us — not simply to academics, however to college students.”
This summer season, longtime New Orleans educator Edward Brown was employed to steer Bricolage. He believes that his educators “carry the torch” of the Trojan legacy, he mentioned.
From its begin, Bricolage adopted the Trojan mascot and colours in a nod to that legacy. Photos of the mascot and splashes of gold and inexperienced are seen all through its corridors. And Brown feels the constructing’s deep historical past each time he walks the attractive hardwood flooring inside the historic construction, he mentioned.
Brown has an appreciation for the historical past of John Mac that goes far past its structure, as a result of longtime John Mac trainer Dr. Raynard Sanders was Brown’s professor at Southern College of New Orleans. By means of Sanders, Brown is nicely conscious of the struggles that predate Bricolage. “A whole lot of sacrifice went into establishing Bricolage as a pillar locally,” Brown mentioned, acknowledging John Mac’s tough years and longtime neglect.
“The establishment went via some unlucky challenges,” he mentioned.
But Brown additionally is aware of that the Trojan Fortress was dwelling to proficient college students and to famend educators like Sanders and Richardson, who produced greatness. “John Mac has a historic and impactful alumni base,” he mentioned. “A whole lot of nice folks got here out of that college.”
After Katrina, even graduates like Kareem confirmed a “excessive stage of persistence” in getting their diplomas regardless of the attempting instances, he mentioned. The entire historical past is a part of John Mac’s proud legacy and he’s devoted to seeing Bricolage construct upon that, he mentioned. “We wish to carry that on.”