The governing board of Lusher Charter School met with an attorney for an hour and a half in closed session Monday evening, coordinating strategies with other charter boards regarding the Orleans Parish School Board’s operating-agreement renewal process.
For Lusher and many other charter schools, this year’s renewal process is the first since Orleans Parish granted their charters five years ago in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, said Blaine LeCesne, chair of the Advocates for an Arts Based Education governing board that operates Lusher Charter School. Lusher officials have been vocal about their frustrations with the process since consultants said their performance made them eligible for a 10-year renewal but the school board offered them a shorter seven-year contract.
Now, a group of charter schools that belong to the Eastbank Collaborative of Charter Schools are banding together for a greater voice in the process, “negotiating collectively” for a standard operating agreement from Orleans Parish, LeCesne said. The Lusher board spent about 90 minutes Monday evening in a closed-door executive session with attorney James Brown of Liskow and Lewis, and LeCesne said afterward that they were discussing the strategy for those negotiations.
Public bodies such as charter school boards are allowed to conduct closed meetings for “strategy sessions or negotiations with respect to collective bargaining, prospective litigation after formal written demand, or litigation when an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the public body,” according to Louisiana state open-meetings law.
Charters in the Eastbank collaborative are a roster of the city’s best-performing and most-acclaimed schools, include Audubon and Sci High in Uptown New Orleans, as well as Benjamin Franklin and Warren Easton high schools, and Einstein, Hynes, Lake Forest and Robert Moton elementaries around the rest of the city (the International School of Louisiana is also a member of the collaborative but not governed by Orleans Parish School Board). Without specifically naming the other schools involved in the negotiations, LeCesne said the schools in the collaborative are “pretty unified” on the issues.
After the strategy session with Brown, the board had a somewhat softer tone in the remainder of its regular meeting regarding the negotiations with Orleans Parish than in previous months. Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger called the process “ongoing” and said Lusher officials remain hopeful that the 10-year renewal may be awarded.
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