schools

Lycee Francais approves 2012-13 budget in preparation for second year

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With its first year on the books, Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans approved the coming year’s budget Monday night and prepared to expand to a new campus with nearly three times as many students. The school expects to have 350 students next year, up from a reported 127 this past year. It will expand the number of preschool sections from four to seven, admit all applicants to kindergarten for a class of 110, grow its first grade to 70 students and add on a second grade of 30 students, board president Jean Montes said during Monday night’s board meeting. The school’s total budget will be slightly more than $3 million, with an operating surplus of just less than $50,000, said business manager David Bedell during a brief review of the 2012-13 budget. The board did not discuss the budget in detail, and when asked during the meeting whether the budget had been properly advertised according to state open-meetings laws, Montes replied that the board is researching which exact requirements apply to Lycee’s type of charter school.

schools

Lycee Francais board to discuss 2012-13 budget

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The Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans board of directors will discuss the school’s budget for the coming year at their regularly monthly meeting tonight, which will take place at 6:30 p.m. at 5401 S. Claiborne Avenue. The agenda for the meeting is as follows:

Agenda for June 11th, 2012
1. Call to order
2. Attendance
3. Approval of past minutes
4.

schools

Lycee Francais chooses general director, accepts board member’s resignation

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In an effort to move past the uncertainty and controversy of the last month, the governing board of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans gave a permanent appointment to its popular school leader and accepted the resignation of an embattled board member on Friday night. Board president Jean Montes also proposed engaging an outside firm to train the board in better school governance, and described a new committee structure that he said will bring a new level of community involvement to the board’s decisions. The Friday-night meeting comes after a tumultuous month for the school. After the resignation of principal Jill Otis in April, the board began advertising for a permanent general director — raising the concerns of many parents that school leader Jean-Jacques Grandiere might be next to leave. Then, in the board’s regular May meeting, board member Kenneth Charity sought to have Allen Kelly voted off the board for suggesting in an email that a third board member, Paige Saleun, receive a “bitchslap” over her handling of the addition of a second grade to the school next year.

schools

Lycee Francais to hold special meeting Friday on general director hiring, board member controversy

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Two weeks after the governing board of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle-Orléans split over a controversial email from one member to another, school leaders will revisit that issue and the ongoing search for a general director at a special meeting at 8 p.m. Friday evening. In the board’s regular monthly meeting May 14, board member Kenneth Charity sought to have Allen Kelly removed from the board, and when that motion failed for lack of a 2/3 majority, Charity resigned himself. Now, the agenda for Friday’s meeting includes a “motion to vote on the status of Mr. Allen Kelly as board member.” Board president Jean Montes said Thursday afternoon that he hopes the issue and the unease that he and other school board members feel over it will be resolved with the vote. “We’re trying to refine and clarify the membership of the board,” Montes said.

schools

Lycee Francais board member resigns after effort to remove another

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After an explosive meeting of the Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans governing board on Monday evening that included an unsuccessful effort to remove one member over a “derogatory” email, the member who led that effort resigned from the board Tuesday morning. The tumult comes amid a transition in the school’s administrative leadership that drew a number of concerned parents to the meeting Monday, and exposes a number of issues that apparently divide the board but have had relatively little discussion in public until now. “Derogatory” email
On April 22, amid ongoing discussions about the plan for the addition of a second grade in the fall, board member Allen Kelly sent the following email, intended for vice-chair Tom Klingler, to the address of fellow board member Paige Saleun by accident:

Tom:
As Vice Chair, would you bitch-slap, Paige? Please… Last I recall I was not invited to the meeting between Jean, JJ, and Paige in which they discussed second grade; were you? Me thinks Paige doth protest too much… have you or I hit a sensitive nerve?

schools

Lycee Francais holds monthly board meeting Monday evening

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The governing board of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans will hold its monthly meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday at 5401 S. Claiborne Avenue. Update, 10:25 a.m. Monday: The position of general director is currently being advertised on the Lycee Francais website, following the resignation of Jill Otis last month. In an email Monday morning, LFNO board chair Jean Montes said that the interim general director, Jean-Jacques Grandiere, is not leaving the school, and that he is a candidate for the general director position. The notice and agenda for Monday’s meeting is as follows, according to an email from the board Sunday:

The LFNO, Inc. Board of Directors will convene Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 6:30 PM at 5401 S. Claiborne Avenue, New Orleans, LA, 70125, for its regularly scheduled monthly meeting. 1.

schools

Lack of Lycee Francais board members at meeting prevents vote on second grade

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Without enough members present to take a vote, the board of directors of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans made a brief announcement Monday night that the school intends to move forward with adding a second grade and deferred further action to next month’s meeting. Louisiana open-meetings law requires “a number of members in excess of one half of the public body’s total membership” in order for a board to hold a meeting, which would be five of LFNO’s eight board members. Only four members — board president Jean Montes, Kenneth Charity, Catherine MacPhaille and Paige Saleun — showed up for Monday’s special meeting called to ratify the decision to add a second grade, so the meeting was not convened. Instead, Montes announced that the school has received state approval to add a second grade next year, and that a lottery was held for it last week. No vote by the board is necessary at this point, Montes said — the meeting planned for Monday night had simply been intended to make the move official in public.

schools

Principal to leave French charter school at year’s end

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The founding principal of Lycée Français de la Nouvelle Orléans will leave the school at year’s end, board members said Monday night in an announcement that raised questions from several audience members. The board spent about 20 minutes in a closed-door executive session discussing principal Jill Otis, and when they returned, outgoing board chair Andrew Abrams announced that Otis has submitted her resignation. “With the utmost respect and admiration,” Abrams said, the board voted unanimously to accept her decision. Otis was not present at the meeting. The board had previously discussed her employment in a closed-door session during a special meeting last week, but she has not commented publicly on the situation.

LFNO

Lycee Francais moves forward with plan to add second grade, begins planning for move to new building

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Lycee Francais de la Nouvelle Orleans will apply to expand to the second grade next year, one year ahead of schedule, as it begins planning to move into a new building on State Street over the summer. The school opened this year with six classes, two sections each of three grade levels — kindergarten and pre-kindergarten for 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds — and had planned to add a grade level each year until high school. Lycee also planned to add sections as needed and, after this year’s admissions process, is already preparing to more than double in size: three classes of pre-K3, four classes of pre-K4, four of kindergarten and three of first grade, for a total of 14 classes and an enrollment of around 300 students. Last month, the Lycee board voted to apply to the state to add both a second and third grade next year, despite concerns from school administrators and some board members about the wisdom of adding a third grade in particular. On Monday night, board member Jean Montes said the focus of the “accelerated growth” efforts has shifted to second grade only, and the board voted 6-0 with two abstentions to modify the application to the state to only add a second grade.