Parents’ frustrations persist amid uncertain future for Audubon Charter renovations

A rendering of the proposed expansion of Audubon Charter School's Broadway campus.

If Audubon Charter School cannot find an 11th-hour location for a temporary campus this summer, it may lose the opportunity to renovate its cramped building on Broadway altogether, officials said Saturday to a group of parents who say they still feel disenfranchised by the entire process.

“Do you have a location that could house the swing space?” Orleans Parish School Board president Lourdes Moran asked a group of about 20 parents at the monthly meeting of Audubon Charter School’s governing board. “Because if not, this project will be put on hold indefinitely until this space is found.”

The former proposal for a temporary campus of modular buildings on a vacant lot in the Lower Garden District is now “off the table,” Moran said, because of the difficulty of meeting the state’s standards for remediating the high levels of lead there. If a new space is not found and the planned two-year renovation of Audubon’s Broadway campus cannot begin soon, Moran said, Audubon could lose its place in line for renovations funded by FEMA recovery money, and perhaps fall into the ranks of school projects that are not funded.

The Rev. Cornelius Tilton, president of the French and Montessori Education board that governs Audubon, noted gratefully that no deadline has been set for a temporary campus to be found. Audubon principal Janice Dupuy said she’s confident that space will turn up, and that she’s told her teachers not to unpack the boxes that they had prepared for a move to the Lower Garden District.

Moran, Tilton and Dupuy all implored the parents in the room to be partners with the school as the process continues.

“Your concerns are our concerns as well,” Dupuy said. “We care about your children just as much as we care about our own children.”

Afterward, however, parents described a tense atmosphere persisting since the open hostility of May’s meeting about lead levels at the Lower Garden District site. Moran chastised them for sending emails she characterized as spreading false rumors that Audubon would be housed at the Arthur Ashe campus — the work there is unrelated to Audubon, she said. And parents bristled when, after parent Chanda Quintal asked for a list of sites that had already been considered, they were told to send the request via email.

“Nobody spoke out of turn. We were very polite, and came willing to extend an olive branch,” said Elizabeth Nichol, an Audubon parent. “But when they give us a short answer and tell us to shoot an email to OPSB when we request more information, that’s unacceptable. We want Lourdes to understand that we’re not in attack mode, but we need more information.”

Quintal said her own opinion is that the school board should engage in the extensive remediation needed at the site on Constance Street, because other New Orleans schools slated for renovation will need “swing space” as well. Knowing what sites have been studied and why they were unacceptable will help parents feel more like partners, she said.

“I really want this to be done in good faith and good will,” Quintal said. “There’s a feeling like it’s ‘us against them,’ and that’s because we’re coming at it from two different angles.”

The school needs to be more forthcoming about the renovation project’s budget, said Karen Reichard, another parent.

“How do I respond to a situation when I don’t know what all the pieces of the puzzle are?” Reichard asked. “There’s a lot of parents who are interested in being partners on this, but when we get held at arm’s length, what can we do?”

To read our live coverage of the Audubon meeting, click “Replay” in the box below