YatBazaar

Warren Easton High School on Canal Street, ca. 1910

The best place to kick off some more-or-less regular blogging about schools in metro New Orleans is to outline the current structure of the system in the city.

Louisiana organizes "school districts" by parish, so the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) is a state-chartered entity that derives its authority from the state's constitution. The school year had not started for the district at the time of the storm, but they expected about 65,000 students. Things had sunk so badly for the district that OPSB was forced by their critics to hire a "turnaround consulting" firm to work with the worst of the schools. Many in the state were ready to wrest control of a number of the worst-performing schools from the board.

Hurricane Katrina changed all that, literally washing away the district's poor performance along with its infrastructure. In the wake of the storm, the state legislature formed the Recovery School District (RSD), placing control of 70 school there. OPSB maintained control of 16 schools, and two charter schools are under the direct control of the state's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

Of the 70 schools under RSD control, 33 are run directy by the district (11,900 students), and 37 are operated by independent, non-profit boards chartered by RSD. Those charter schools enroll 14,800 students.

OPSB's runs four schools dirctly with 2,800 students and 12 charters with 7,600 students.

The two state-run charters enroll 900 students.

Since 2006, public school enrollment in Orleans Parish has grown from 25,651 in 2006 to 38,051 last year.

Ninety percent of students enrolled in Orleans Parish public schools are African-American.

If you're wondering where the white kids are, they're enrolled in private schools, as well as the eleven Catholic high schools in the city.

Prior to the storm, OPSB spent $7,893 per pupil, supplemented by $7,630 per pupil from the state. In 2008, those numbers increased to $15,557 by OPSB/RSD, supplemented by $9,966 by the state.

Next time: How schools in Orleans Parish are administered.

Thanks to the Cowen Institute of Tulane University for the data in this article.

Brendan McCarthy of Da Paper has an interesting article today about the amount of overtime being spent by the New Orleans Police Department. There's some officers in the department bringing in some righteous overtime bucks:

The NOPD has spent $6.1 million on overtime so far this year, nearly four times the $1.6 million it was allocated for all of 2010, according to figures from Mayor Mitch Landrieu's office.

Many of you who follow me on Twitter have noticed that I append the "hashtag" #11dead to tweets relating to the Deepwater Horizon oil disaster. There are two reasons why I started its use.

First, as much as I understand that the hearts of many environmentalists and animal rights activists are basically in the right place, it's unconscionable to me to forget that eleven men died on Deepwater Horizon, no matter how many oil-soaked birds are found on the Gulf Coast. I've even heard animal activists talk about how they have no sympathy for those men-simply because they worked in the oil industry was enough for their lives to have no value. They were part of the problem, after all.

Bullshit. The men and women of Southern Louisiana have a symbiotic relationship with the land, the marsh, the swamp, the water, and yes, the minerals under the ground. They are not just exploiting the wealth, they live and work where it originates. Such a basic dismissal of their lives is not acceptable.

The second reason for the hashtag is the obvious: When you have human filth like Rep Joe Barton of Texas (R-BP) apologizing to the executives of BP rather than expressing concern for the families of the men who died, it's clear that there is a significant portion of our political leadership who have gone off the rails.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads. While you're appreciating your family, take a moment and think about the eleven families who aren't feeling so celebratory today.

#11dead

the Vuvuzela horn

Dear Ms. Rita Benson-Leblanc:

New Orleanians are not strangers to the Vuvuzela horn. The plastic horn that you hear people blowing at the soccer matches in South Africa this month is sold by countless street vendors during every parade at Carnival time in the city and the suburbs. They often disappoint kids along the parade route, however, because they have to be played like a real horn (trumpet, trombone, etc.), and if a parent doesn't know how, the gift is a bust. Still, there's no better way to piss off the obnoxious people with the three ladders and a bad attitude next to you on the neutral ground than to get your kid a vuvuzela.

They're loud. They're noisy. In large numbers, they make a sound as if a swarm of bees signaling the apocalypse has descended on a stadium.

And that's why they're perfect for Da Dome.

Miss Rita, please consider this suggestion: Order 60,000 vuvuzela horns, half in black and half in yellow, for each Saints home game. Get a sponsor for them, no doubt CapitalOne, Bud, or another big company will buy into this idea.

Can you imagine that bee-swarm sound in Da Dome? If that doesn't send Brett Favre into permanent retirement, nothing will.

Love,
YatPundit

Photo Credit: Judy Reynolds (@jareyn)

Some good stuff in Da Paper this morning. Political consultant and Very Angry Cajun, James Carville, did an op/ed piece that hits home several good points:

Since the first French explorers established a camp here in 1699, New Orleanians have developed a reputation for being able to adapt and bounce back from adversity. From the fire of 1788, which destroyed over 80% of the buildings in the city, to yellow fever epidemics in the 1830s, to Hurricanes Betsey and Katrina, and now with the worst oil spill in the history of mankind just a hundred miles away, the people of this city have experienced their share of disasters that would have caused lesser people to fold the tent and walk away. New Orleans is not a city where people who whine a lot last very long. So, it's no surprise when I read about folks coming to town end up leaving within a year or two, because they can't nurture a local following as a victim.

Take the tea party movement, for example. When you go beyond the racial aspects of the movement, the loudest people in the group are folks who are, for one reason or another, professional victims. Take the guy from Alabama who advocates throwing rocks and bricks at Congressional offices while collecting Social Security disability. The "black helicopter" set have long part of the permanent victim class of American society.

These folks don't last long in New Orleans, mainly because we don't have time for it. Some of the most conservative (therefore, the most likely to be teabaggers) voters in the area live in St. Bernard and Plaquemines Parishes. Down there, people make the most of good economic times by working in the oil/gas industry, in the refineries and offshore. When the really good oil/gas jobs fall off, they turn back to the bayous and the gulf for their livelihood. They've survived boom and bust, political changes and hurricanes. Even now, when BP's oil threatens to trump all of that, they're not whining. They're angry, and they know that nobody in the area will give them the time of day if all they do is claim victim status.

On the left, what little of the city's "victim class" got washed away by the storm. There was a group of "activists" who regularly attended meetings of the Orleans Parish School Board, complaining about the "plantation mentality" of white folks in the city, but their complaints only became shriller and shriller as black OPSB members were perp-walked to Club Fed. The storm has altered the landscape of public education in the entire metro area that these "victims" are now forced to either join in to support the charter schools in the area or shut up. On issues other than education, complaints that prior to the storm arguably could have been dismissed as victim-hood are, sadly, all too real in post-storm NOLA. The fight for affordable housing leads the way in this regard.

In the political arena, victims rarely garner sympathy. You don't like how a neighborhood treats you (or a member of your family who is running for office)? There's a simple solution: don't feckin run for office. Politics in NOLA is no worse than, oh, I dunno, maybe New Jersey? Are the townships and counties in and around Princeton small islands of Platonic Democracy? Consider the value of even a seat in the Louisiana Legislature. I can see someone getting into a campaign for such a seat and not appreciating that others are willing to go to extreme lengths to win, but that's how it goes. The storm wiped a lot of slates clean, but politics wasn't one of them. Many folks who run for office have long-term goals in that regard. The storm might have been a speed bump in the path, but five years is ample time to put distance between a candidate and the speed bump. While there are always opportunities for newcomers, assuming that the "old ways" of NOLA politics died with the storm is a quick ticket to defeat. The savvy politician builds on each run for office, win or lose, working the neighborhood groups, active non-profits, and courting the folks with the money.

Like re-building lives after tough times in the bayou country, there's no room for victim-hood in politics.

New Orleans has no place for professional victims. Take that shit someplace else, like back to school.

Like any urban area that's in a period of recovery, New Orleans benefits much more from those who are willing to commit to the city for a long-term relationship, as opposed to casual interest for a short period of time by those who are easily distracted.

My son calls them "bandwagon fans" when it comes to sports teams. I never really thought of "bandwagon New Orleanians," but I encountered one yesterday who has "fallen out of love" with the city. What a pity, because we could use the exposure that even cable-tv pundits bring. Still, it happens to a lot of folks, something that interested us last year often just isn't as oooh-shiny this year.

There's no doubt that NOLA is just not all that oooh-shiny in the first place for many folks, but rather than tell them "don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out," I'd like to offer y'all an invitation to come back soon. We're a city that has always tried to treat guests well. It's doubtful we'll ever treat you like family ever again, but we'll still do what we can to make your occasional stays pleasant.

In the meantime, we'll reserve our true love and devotion for those with whom we have long-term relationships. Whether it's locals who grew up here, or chefs like Emeril, who made their names thanks to New Orleans, or politicians like those in the Congressional Black Caucus, who took up our cause after the storm, we know who truly cares.

And we love you for it.

The State Capitol in Baton Rouge, Louisiana

In many states that have "part-time" legislatures, where sessions are limited to a small term each year, members are often regarded as "non-professional" politicians.  The "value" of holding such a seat is regarded as low when compared to other political offices.  It's natural, then, for even nationally-recognized "experts" on politics to under-value the scope of a legislative seat in Louisiana.

I've told this story before, but it merits re-telling here.  Back in 1987, a guy I went to University of New Orleans with decided to try his hand at running for the Louisiana House of Representatives.  With a budget of lest than five thousand dollars, he did what you'd expect a guy in his late twenties with political ambitions would do, mount a grassroots campaign.  This entailed a lot of knocking on doors, walking local shopping malls, speaking at neighborhood associations, Kiwanis clubs, and the like.  For a job that paid about $21,000 a year, you wouldn't expect that much more would be necessary to compete.

This young man didn't have any illusions that he was going to unseat an incumbent, even one just completing his first term.  What he didn't expect, however, was to have that incumbent outspend him by a factor of 6:1.  The incumbent dropped well over $30,000 on his campaign, and the young man challenging him was crushed at the polls.

Over copious quantities of beer that November, we tried to sort out what happened.  When you're in what you expect to be a Pinewood Derby race and you get run over by a NASCAR team, things just don't make sense.  It made even less sense in the context of the race.  The incumbent for that seat, Kernan "Skip" Hand, had just finished his first term.  Prior to that, he ran for Mayor of Kenner, losing to now former Parish President (and likely future guest at Club Fed) Aaron Broussard.  That mayoral campaign was one of the most expensive in local political history, with the top three candidates spending a total of over $1million.  Hand won the legislative seat after another hard-fought and expensive campaign a year later.  There's no way Hand would have retired the debt from those two campaigns by 1987, and here he was, spending another $30K to crush an unknown newcomer.

All for a job that paid $21K.  It just didn't make any sense.  We all went on with our lives from there, and none of the folks I knew from Student Government at UNO attempted a run at office after that.  Still, we'd occasionally scratch our heads over that 1987 campaign, trying to sort it out. 

The answer became a bit clearer in 1993, when then-mayor of New Orleans, Sidney Barthelemy shined sunlight on an old legislative perk that was shared by the mayor.  He gave his son a four-year scholarship to Tulane University, under a program dating back over a century.  In 1883, the University of Louisiana, a public institution, was converted to the private Tulane University.  To compensate the state for the loss of the public school, Tulane agreed to give tuition waivers to the city's mayor and all the state legislators.  The mayor of NOLA gets to award a 4-year waiver annually, and the legislators get a 1-year waiver annually.  Naturally the revelation that the mayor was giving his family a huge financial bonus (the scholarships were valued at $17K/year in 1993), the ensuing firestorm was huge.  In the public outcry that ensued, it was revealed that then-Representative Hand had given a number of his annual scholarships to family members. 

Now the $30K spent on getting re-elected in 1987 made a lot more sense.  Forget the salary, there was a righteous chunk of money involved in the Tulane thing alone.  Things have changed and a lot more sunlight shines on this program now, but you get the idea.

This is just one "perk" that is enjoyed by state legislators in Louisiana, even though the legislature only meets for three months out of the year.  Given how long the Tulane tuition waivers remained out of the public eye, who knows what else exists that puts extra cash into the pockets of legislators.

Louisiana is often regarded as a backwater in the United States politically, particularly given our history with Huey P. Long.  State government here is quite centralized, however, largely because of mineral royalties.  The state reaps the benefit of offshore oil leases administered by the federal government, so various aspects of government that would be exclusively local in other states (like funding public school teacher salaries) include a role for state government.  This greatly increases the role and influence of even the part-time legislators.

To sum it up, an aspiring politician who is unfamiliar with the perks and influence of state legislators might not see the truck that is a co-ordinated effort to win one of these seats coming at them until it's too late.

(x-posted yatpundit, seashell-software, and canalstreetcar)

Front and rear views of my two sets of Moo Cards

With the advent of Da Twittah, I've wanted to re-do my business cards for a while.  Naturally, I tweeted this desire, and @AuraFedora responded that i absolutely had to check out Moo Cards.  When I had a look at the site, I was impressed by how easy it would be to put something together there.  I also liked their pricing, so I made up two sets, one for seashell software and the other for NOSRA.

I worked up what I think is a nice graphic for letterhead for seashell some time ago. It never worked well for a business card, though, since it was designed to go across a page. The two-sided format of the Moo card gave me the chance to use it, though. With the company logo taking up the entire side, that left me free to not put it on the other side. That left room to add a graphical reference to Hitachi Data Systems. Since my main use for these cards is to give to students and storage colleagues, the "HDS certified" graphic serves two purposes: It cements the relationship I have with HDS and gives me the chance to establish a bit of street cred.

The "computer" cards are good for when I'm doing training, but I wanted something more "local" for around-town/social occasions.  The streetcar nonprofit is important to me, and I absolutely love the photo on the "horizontal" side.  It's Car #29, the last of the single-truck Ford, Bacon & Davis streetcars, along with one of the Perley A. Thomas cars.  In front is the YLC streetcar model that was painted by the NORTA craftsmen from Carrollton Station.  It speaks volumes for moo.com that I was able to create a card that was oriented portrait on one side and horizontal on the other.

The moo.com website was very easy to use.  I had one initial snag getting started, however.   Their "file upload" application does not work at all under Linux.  When I opened VirtualBox and went to the site in a Windows "virtual machine" it worked fine. 

Both sets of cards came in nice, cardboard dispenser boxes (box is just visible below the cards in the top photo). 

I'm VERY pleased with moo.com!

Words alone can't express how much I want to hug @DebCotton right now for writing this article. I won't even try, I'll let her speak for herself:

Anyhoo, I'm filing this after a fabulous Creole Italian dinner and too much wine and song at Vincent's. Now I'm off to catch one of the best live music shows in the country - the Rebirth Brass Band at the Maple Leaf, which will be packed as it is every middle-of-the-week Tuesday night. And the night won't end till the band says it ends.

*sigh*

:-)