environment

For temporary site, Audubon Charter favors Gentilly campus Hynes is leaving — if available in time

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Many Audubon Charter School parents and teachers see the St. James Major campus in Gentilly as an attractive option for a temporary campus after Hynes Charter School moves out of it during the winter break, they told school officials after hearing about four new options at a Thursday afternoon meeting. Before the school can begin a two-year renovation of its Broadway campus, it must find an interim location for the students who are already there, and the urgency of the search has increased since a site in the Lower Garden District was deemed unacceptable earlier this summer. The Orleans Parish School Board has asked Audubon to have an answer by Aug. 1, little more than a week away.

recovery

Audubon Charter schedules meeting about temporary campus options

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After the Orleans Parish School Board offered Audubon Charter School two new options for a temporary campus, the school has scheduled a meeting with parents and teachers Thursday to discuss those plans. The meeting will be held at 3 p.m. Thursday (July 21) in the cafeteria of the school’s Carrollton campus, according to the school website. Parish school board officials said last week that Audubon’s two options are either the vacant site of the former Jean Gordon school or an empty parking lot behind the OPSB offices in Algiers.

schools

Audubon Charter offered temporary sites on westbank or lakefront

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Audubon Charter School has two new options for a temporary campus during a planned two-year renovation of its Broadway building — modular buildings in a parking lot behind the school board offices in Algiers or the site of the former Jean Gordon school near the University of New Orleans campus — but a deadline is looming in about two weeks for a decision, officials said. The planned expansion of the Audubon school building on Broadway Street will require temporary classroom space for the students there for about two years. Officials had identified a vacant lot in the Lower Garden District for modular buildings, but that plan was abandoned earlier this summer amid concerns about high levels of lead in the soil there. Without temporary space, Audubon risks losing the federal money for the renovations altogether, school officials have said, so they have continued searching for new locations. During an Orleans Parish School Board property-committee meeting on Thursday, school board Chief Financial Officer Stan Smith said the westbank and lakefront lots for modular buildings were the only two new options that have emerged.

schools

Parents’ frustrations persist amid uncertain future for Audubon Charter renovations

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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.

public safety

Audubon Charter to search for new temporary site so Broadway renovations can proceed

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With a Lower Garden District site deemed unacceptably contaminated by lead, Audubon Charter School will continue searching over the summer for a temporary location that will allow renovations at its Broadway campus can proceed as planned last year, officials said. The planned renovation and expansion of Audubon’s Broadway campus was postponed “until further notice” Wednesday, the Orleans Parish School Board said after failing to reach an agreement with the state Department of Environmental Quality on how to to make a temporary campus proposed for Annuniciation Street safe from the high levels of lead in the soil there. Late Thursday afternoon, Audubon officials said the search is back on. “The FAME Board and the Audubon Charter School administration will continue to work with the Orleans Parish School Board to identify suitable swing space for our students during the renovation of our Broadway campus,” the emailed statement reads. “In the event suitable space is not identified in time for the start of the school year, our students will report to the Broadway campus in the fall.

environment

Audubon Charter renovations postponed indefinitely because of lead at temporary campus site

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Audubon Charter School has indefinitely postponed the renovations of its Broadway Street campus after its plan to use a lead-saturated site in the Lower Garden District for a temporary campus was deemed “unacceptable” by state officials, the school announced late Wednesday. According to an announcement emailed from Orleans Parish School Board at 4:40 p.m. Wednesday:
After failed attempts to arrive at an acceptable mitigation plan with the LA Department of Environmental Quality (LDEQ), the Orleans Parish School Board announced today that it will postpone its Audubon Charter renovation project until further notice. Audubon Charter was scheduled for a two-year comprehensive renovation at its Broadway school in accordance with the School Facilities Master Plan. In order to accommodate the school, the School Board had arranged for a replacement site, known as a swing site, in the Lower Garden District on the block bounded by Richard, Constance, Orange and Annunciation Streets. The Annunciation site was selected after an exhaustive search for space in the Uptown area.

schools

Lusher, other charters continue negotiations with Orleans Parish

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Lusher Charter School and several other charter schools in the city are continuing to negotiate with the Orleans Parish School Board over their governing agreement for the coming year, officials said Tuesday. The agreement will have basic elements common to all the schools chartered under the Orleans Parish School Board, which include Audubon Charter and other top-performing schools around the city that have banded together for a unified legal approach, said Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger at a Tuesday afternoon meeting of the board that governs Lusher. The agreement will also have conditions specific to each school, she said. “The main goal is to get something we can be comfortable with for a number of years,” Riedlinger said. One issue in particular for Lusher is the length of time for which its charter will be renewed.

city government

Audubon Charter site has “highest lead I’ve ever seen” in city, scientist says, but promises it can be contained

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Lead levels in the soil at the proposed temporary site of Audubon Charter School are the highest one scientist has ever seen in New Orleans, but he assured a cafeteria packed with concerned, angry and sometimes unconvinced parents Thursday night that the remediation techniques he suggests will make the campus safe. “This is the highest lead I’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Paul Lo, a certified lead inspector and lead risk assessor with Materials Management Group Inc., who has headed recent remediation efforts at playgrounds around the city. “But your children are not going to play on the existing conditions, and that’s a fact.” The Broadway campus of Audubon Charter School is about to embark on a two-year renovation project, but officials were unable this spring to locate a suitable temporary building for the students who will be displaced. What they found instead was a vacant lot at the corner of Annunciation and Orange in the Lower Garden District where they plan to create a campus of modular buildings, but soil tests of the playground area there have revealed lead contamination in the soil that exceeds federal limits by 10 times or more.