The class-action case applies to all School Board employees who were tenured as of Aug. 29, 2005, the date that Katrina blasted up the Louisiana-Mississippi line and New Orleans levees failed, flooding much of the city. Many employees were members of the United Teachers of New Orleans, but the appeals court ruled that an earlier settlement with the union did not prevent this case from being tried. The decision validates the anger felt by former teachers who lost their jobs. It says they should have been given top consideration for jobs in the new education system that emerged in New Orleans in the years after the storm.
As you might have imagined, in the wake of the storm, New Orleans became a marvelous environment for griftin…er..innovation.
Beyond the individual employees who were put out, the mass layoff has been a lingering source of pain for those who say school system jobs were an important component in maintaining the city’s black middle class. New Orleans’ teaching force has changed noticeably since then. More young, white teachers have come from outside through groups such as Teach for America. And charter school operators often offer private retirement plans instead of the state pension fund, which can discourage veteran teachers who have years invested in the state plan.
And honesty and good faith aboundeth, too.
The 7,000-plus educators were initially placed on “disaster leave without pay” then terminated, a decision that was made final on March 24, 2006. The circumstances of those layoffs rubbed salt in the wound, plaintiffs said: Notices were delivered to teachers’ old addresses, sometimes to houses that no longer existed, and they directed teachers wanting to appeal the layoff to come to the School Board’s building, which Katrina had destroyed. This happened even though state-appointed consultants Alvarez & Marsal had set up a hotline to collect teachers’ evacuation addresses.
Gee, I wonder why?
Meanwhile, the state took over almost all the city’s public schools and radically expanded the opportunity to charter them. The tragedy of the storm offered the opportunity, reformers said, to make big changes that would give the children the education they deserved. Schools reopened one at a time or in handfuls, in a decentralized system. The charters had complete control of their own hiring.
The court laid a lot of the problem at the feet of the Louisiana state government, which did a lot of invite the vultures to come down and feast. The state set the table. But the gorging was done by the strangers in town.
Read more: New Orleans School Decision – Teachers Get A Major Win In New Orleans – Esquire