Next on Lusher’s menu: A lunch terrace at the upper-school campus

With a new playground set to open Monday on the Willow Street campus, Lusher Charter School officials are turning their attention to the next project: a lunch terrace for middle and high school students at the Fortier building on Freret Street. The lunch terrace will sit on the Joseph Street side of the campus, and will include both tables and stadium-style seating along the building’s wall. The ground will have a combination of artificial turf and hard surfaces to reduce the amount of mud that forms on the wet ground. “Today’s a great day to see how much we need the lunch terrace, because after a week of rain, it looks pretty bad out there,” said CEO Kathy Riedlinger at Saturday morning’s meeting of Lusher’s governing board. The terrace will also feature a substantial amount of open space, so that teachers can hold grade-level gatherings of as many as 150 students at at time as well, said middle school principal Brenda Bourne.

Proposed budget for Lusher building renovations cut by 30 percent

The budget for repairs to major structural issues at Lusher Charter School’s two campuses has been reduced by more than $7 million from what was originally planned, based on an Orleans Parish School Board vote on Tuesday, leaving officials wondering how the cuts will affect the scope of the renovations. What was touted as the final plan for distributing a $2 billion settlement from FEMA for school construction and repairs in October allocated nearly $18.8 million to repairs at Lusher’s Fortier campus and nearly $4.8 million to the Willow Street campus, figures that drew praise and gratitude from Lusher officials when they were announced. The money was intended to repair problems such as roof and window leaks that were causing continued deterioration to both buildings, bringing them to a citywide standard of “warm, safe and dry.” On Tuesday, as the Orleans Parish School Board voted to budget money for those repairs to its schools around the city, the numbers listed for Lusher’s two schools were dramatically different: $13.9 million at Fortier, and $2.4 million for Willow. The difference drew the attention of OPSB member Woody Koppel, who questioned why the changes were made.

2011: The year in review

Editor’s note: We had originally intended to do a listing of “most popular” posts on UptownMessenger.com in 2011, but in the process decided that a focus on the most important stories of the year in Uptown New Orleans would be more substantive. What follows is our assessment of the stories we’ve covered over the past year that continue to matter the most, with some commentary explaining our thinking. And, for anyone curious, those “most popular” posts are included at bottom as well. Thank you to everyone who read us in 2011, and we look forward to another year. 1) Murder
The city’s unyielding — in fact, substantially growing — murder rate is arguably the single most important story of New Orleans in 2011, and Uptown New Orleans was by no means spared in the epidemic.

Lusher seeks lead role in developing new national standards for schools

Lusher Charter School is at the forefront of the effort to develop new educational standards that will be implemented in public schools across the country over the next three years, officials said. “It’s the largest movement that has come to schools since No Child Left Behind,” said Patty Glaser, the assistant Head of School at Lusher Charter School, introducing the concept during a meeting of the school’s governing board Saturday. Unlike the unpopular No Child Left Behind law, the Common Core Standards are not a government initiative — they are a set of educational standards being developed collaboratively by educators and experts from across the country. The process has been endorsed by the White House, however, and some federal education grants will only be open to the states that have adopted the standards, which include Louisiana and 44 others so far. The standards are meant to be broad, leaving most specific curriculum choices with local school districts.

“Lusher Lump” removed from Lowerline Street

Motorists on Lowerline Street no longer have to suffer sickening scrapes along the bottom of their cars, now that the infamous “Lusher Lump” has been flattened out after neighbors’ concerns were aired on UptownMessenger.com and in an Action Report with our partners at WWL-TV. The strange spur pushing up from the roadway next to Lusher Elementary School was a menace to nearly everyone around it. Drivers trying to dodge it were a menace to the rear-view mirrors of cars parked in the block, and the gravest fear was of an accident involving a child at the school. The Central Carrollton Association named it their top infrastructure priority, and after a November board meeting, UptownMessenger.com and WWL-TV collaborated on an Action Report that quickly led to the lump’s long-awaited demise. “CCA has even more to be thankful for this year since the Lusher Hump was fixed this past Monday!”

Neighbors worry about safety issues around “Lusher hump”

A raised chunk of concrete on Lowerline Street, scarred and streaked across the top where its scrapes the bottoms of passing cars every day, has earned the nickname the “Lusher hump” from the neighborhood leaders imploring the city to fix it. The issue is the top infrastructure priority of the Central Carrollton Association, whose members even confronted Mayor Mitch Landrieu about it at one of his recent budget hearings. Bill Capo, the action reporter with our partners at WWL-TV, has more:

City officials have told the association that the equipment needed to fix the lump is in the shop.

KIPP on South Carrollton headed to Gentilly, Banneker to Hollygrove, RSD says

KIPP Believe College Prep on South Carrollton is headed to a new school building in Gentilly, and Benjamin Banneker Elementary in the Riverbend is slated for a new campus in Hollygrove, according to school assignment plans being aired publicly by the Recovery School District this week. Those two changes are the most significant for Uptown campuses among the recommendations that the RSD will be hosting public hearings on this week. Many other RSD schools around Uptown will essentially be unaffected, and some of the higher-profile schools run through the Orleans Parish School Board are not included in the list. KIPP’s highest-performing middle school, KIPP Believe College Prep, is slated for the old Stuart Bradley site on Humanity Street just off Interstate 610, where one of the city’s new $22.5 million school buildings will be constructed from FEMA money. The move will leave its current site, the McNair High School campus on the corner of South Carrollton and Birch, as an “opportunity” campus — suitable as a temporary site while another campus is being renovated, but not slated for any renovations or long-term assignments itself.