West Bank charter group to take over Cohen High School

Walter L. Cohen College Prep High School in the Milan neighborhood will be operated by Collegiate Academies beginning in the 2023-24 school year, NOLA Public Schools announced on Thursday (Dec. 15). The New Orleans College Prep board, citing dwindling enrollment, said in October it plans to relinquish its Cohen charter at the end of this school year. NOLA-PS Superintendent Dr. Avis Williams said the historic school’s legacy will be retained. The school colors — Kelly green, white and gray — and Green Hornet mascot will stay at Cohen.

Cohen High offers its students a $100 vaccination incentive

Walter L. Cohen High School, at 3520 Dryades St. in the Milan neighborhood, is offering $100 to eligible students who have received or will receive the Covid-19 vaccine. At a vaccination event on Thursday (Nov. 18), around 40 students took advantage of the offer and received their first or second shot. The initiative began Sept.

Ruling on parking paves the way for Cohen high school construction

The Board of Zoning Adjustments on Monday approved a long-debated parking plan for a rebuilt Walter L. Cohen College Prep high school campus. The campus will have more parking spots than the School Board originally proposed, but the plan falls short of the amount lobbied for by the school’s neighbors in the Delachaise area. The high school operated by the New Orleans College Prep charter school network is set to redeveloped into a 103,000-square-foot three-story building with 35 classrooms that could accommodate about 600 students and 75 faculty and staff members. The school currently on the site will be demolished. Such a campus, according to the city’s Comprehensive Zoning Ordinance, needs 145 off-street parking spaces.

New Cohen College Prep High School asking city to ease parking requirements

By Emily Carmichael, Uptown Messenger

As the old Walter L. Cohen College Prep High School building nears its demolition, community members gave their feedback on the structure that will replace it, zeroing in on parking and the auditorium. A second community meeting was held Thursday for the project at 3520 Dryades St., which is seeking permission to have fewer parking spots and fewer loading docks than required by zoning regulations. Regulations require 154 parking spaces and two loading docks. The current plans for the new school building have 40 parking spaces and one loading dock. Attendees said this would not be enough parking spaces to accommodate the building’s full capacity of 600 students and 75 faculty members, and would result in an overflow of on-street parking that could damage lawns, congest streets and inconvenience neighbors.

Cohen students continue protests over teacher, staff firings

Meagan McKinnon, senior class president at Walter L. Cohen High School, left campus Wednesday afternoon with no idea of the upheaval the coming week would bring to her campus. Thursday morning, the student body was abuzz with rumors that the school was about to be merged with John McDonogh High School. At an assembly that afternoon, they found out that no merger was planned, but that the New York-based Future Is Now charter group that took over McDonogh this year would be given control of Cohen within a week, and that most of the Cohen administrators and teachers would be replaced. Stunned, McKinnon and her classmates marched out of the building. They haven’t returned to class since then, instead alternating between protests and class time on the lawn as they demand the decisions be justified or reversed.

New Orleans College Prep, operator of Cohen High School, continues to work with budget gap

New Orleans College Prep, the charter school that manages Walter L. Cohen High School, may have to dip into its reserves to cover a $300,000 gap between expenses and revenues in its $11.2 million budget for the coming year, if fundraisers and donations cannot fill the shortfall, according to a report by Yomi Akinyemi for The Lens. The budget hole comes from the expiration of previous startup grants and College Prep’s increasing portion of the costs of the Cohen building.

Cohen High School’s operator acts on plans to run another school, after questionable closed-door meeting

The New Orleans College Prep governing board — which operates Sylvanie Williams elementary in Central City and Walter L. Cohen High School — has decided to apply to run a third school, and took action on the application after a three-hour closed-door meeting that appears to have run afoul of the state’s open-meetings laws, reports Joshua Johnston of The Lens.

State education board meeting at Cohen HS becomes forum for concerns about charter takeover

What was about to be an extraordinarily brief public meeting of the state’s top education officials at Walter L. Cohen High School became an unscripted dialogue about the transformation of that school and others into charters Wednesday evening. The state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education held a meeting in New Orleans on Wednesday with an agenda primarily of reports — a recommendation that Lafayette Academy be allowed to add an eighth grade and move its youngest classes and offices to a new location off-site, and receiving reports on preschool programs and building projects around the city. The board breezed through those items with few comments in less than 20 minutes, and was about to adjourn when Ashana Bigard, a parent and activist, asked for permission to speak. Recovery School District superintendent Patrick Dobard agreed to hear her questions, and Bigard began by expressing concern about discipline policies as Walter L. Cohen High School is transformed into a charter school operated by NOLA College Prep. Specifically, she said, NOLA College Prep has one of the highest suspension rates in the city — for minor infractions that Cohen students are not used to being punished for. “We don’t get suspended for laughing, or not sitting up straight, or maybe not having a belt,” Bigard said.

State school board to hear construction updates during meeting at Cohen campus

The Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education will meet at 6 p.m. tonight (Wednesday, May 30) at Walter L. Cohen High School, 3520 Dryades Street. Among the agenda items are a request to add an an eighth grade to Lafayette Academy, and move the preschool, kindergarten and central offices to a new site in Mid-City. The board will also receive a report on school construction projects around the city, including Audubon Charter’s Broadway campus renovation, the construction of Lawrence Crocker campus in the Milan neighborhood, the gym construction at McMain High School, the design of the Booker T. Washington High School, and the installation of solar panels at the International School of Louisiana’s Camp Street campus.