Uptown Messenger (https://uptownmessenger.com/tag/lusher/page/4/)
After a donation of exercise equipment to the team from the Brees Foundation, the Saints quarterback and ardent Lusher supporter stopped by the school for a training session, our partners at WWL-TV reported. The Brees Foundation previously donated the Lusher High School football field, and last year Brees made a personal visit to encourage the team ahead of their first-ever trip to the state playoffs.
Lusher Charter School will continue reserving space for children of Tulane University employees and Tulane will continue providing free classes for Lusher high school students for the next five years, based on an agreement pending between the two institutions. The partnership between Lusher and Tulane dates back to the months after Hurricane Katrina, when Lusher was seeking to reopen as a charter amid widespread uncertainty about the future of the New Orleans public school system. The state’s half of Lusher’s funding was secure, but it was unclear whether local tax revenues would be sufficient to provide the other half, said school CEO Kathy Riedlinger. When Tulane stepped in with a guarantee of the $1.6 million local portion for the remainder of the 2005-06 school year, Lusher Charter was able to open and the partnership was born. The agreement was formalized three years ago, and its five-year renewal has very few changes, said Paul Barron, a Lusher board member and Tulane law professor and former interim administrator at the university immediately after Katrina.
A new allocation of federal school-construction money around Orleans Parish that includes a number of Uptown charters left out of previous plans drew praise from the Lusher Charter School board on Wednesday, and high hopes that this plan will be the last one. Lusher’s two campuses are now slated for about $23.5 million in refurbishment, with the bulk of the money going to the Fortier high school campus where needs are most dire. In a brief board meeting Wednesday evening, Lusher CEO Kathy Riedlinger said that the money is to seal the “outer envelope of both buildings.” At Fortier, that will include work on the windows, the bricks and the roof to prevent water intrusion, and the extent of the work necessary on the roof could determine whether the heating-and-air system will also receive much-needed repairs. The first public meeting about the revised plan is at 5:30 p.m. Thursday (Oct.
Both campuses of Lusher Charter School, “Baby Ben” Franklin Elementary and the International School of Louisiana’s Camp Street campus are all newly slated for renovations under the latest plan to spend the remainder of a $2 billion FEMA payout for school repairs, and Johnson Elementary will have a renewed shot at moving to the Priestly site. Lusher supporters in particular dominated the town hall forums held in Uptown New Orleans over the summer, describing their buildings’ critical structural issues that needed repair. The argument they made, joined in by representatives over other Uptown campuses, is that the rush to build “21st Century” buildings around the city should not take undue priority over the needs of existing programs.
Those concerns were apparently heard by district officials, because the plan released Friday creates an additional category of schools to be refurbished, including many Uptown campuses. Patty Glazer, assistant head of Head of School at Lusher, praised district leaders for their “creative problem solving” with the reallocations. “We’re thrilled,” Glazer said.
A majority of Uptown public schools met the growth targets set for them by the state last year, led by New Orleans Charter Science and Math High School with more than 30 percent improvement.
Applying to some of the highest-performing charter schools in New Orleans will be a little easier for parents this year, now that 10 schools will be using the same application forms and admission dates. The Eastbank Collaborative of Charter Schools — which includes Lusher, Audubon, the International School of Louisiana and SciHigh in Uptown New Orleans, as well as Benjamin Franklin High School, Hynes and others elsewhere in the city — has crafted a shared application form that parents can fill out an use for each school they want to apply to, officials said this week. The schools will all accept the applications during the same timeframe — Oct. 10 to Jan. 13 — and parents will be notified no later than April 13.
A number of Uptown’s neighborhood leaders, former elected officials and residents form a majority of the candidates seeking a six-month appointment to the New Orleans City Council, until an election is held to replace resigning Councilman-at-Large Arnie Fielkow. On Thursday, 13 of the 16 people who have applied for the job appeared before the council to introduce themselves, and their past or present roles in Uptown civic life were prominent in many of their their pitches:
Former state Sen. Diana Bajoie, who held the District 5 seat that covers most of Uptown prior to former Sen. Cheryl Gray Evans and current Sen. Karen Carter Peterson, said she applied after several community members asked her to. She greeted each current council member personally, including her own, Stacy Head, but emphasized her citywide work during her Senate career, such as contributions to the Superdome, New Orleans Arena and the New Orleans Convention Center. Bajoie also stressed her experience with “billion-dollar budgets” as vice-chair of Senate Finance committee, in light of the city’s upcoming budget debate. “I have some ideas already in mind to address that deficit,” Bajoie said.
They say good things come to those who wait: Elementary students at Lusher Charter School’s Willow Street campus started the school year without a playground, but the equipment slated to replace it this spring is expected to include a zip line. “This delights me, because I want one, too,” said Patty Glaser, Lusher’s director of curriculum and development. In June, the school was recommended to remove the aging equipment at Willow (18 years old, by Glaser’s estimate) for inspection. School officials found structural problems that could not be easily repaired, such as the slide pulling away from its supports. and chose not to to put it back up.
After publicly pleading for emergency structural repairs last month following years, Audubon and Lusher charter schools now appear to be among a handful of schools slated for work to prevent further deterioration at their campuses. The Orleans Parish School Board decided this week to fund “stabilization” at seven school sites, including Audubon’s Carrollton campus, Audubon assistant principal Dawn Collins told the charter school’s governing board at a Saturday morning meeting to applause and cheers from the board and the small audience. District officials could not be reached Saturday, but a meeting agenda available online shows that the other campuses slated for repairs were Lusher’s elementary and high school campuses, Bethune, McDonogh No. 35, Warren Easton and Edna Karr. Audubon’s understanding is that $4.5 million has been designated for the projects, and that consultants will determine the most critical needs at each school before deciding exactly where that money will be spent, said Alisa Dupre’, business operations manager at Audubon Charter.
Lusher Charter School intensified its cries for basic building renovations and Sophie B. Wright supporters made a full-court press for a gym Tuesday night at the second town-hall meeting Uptown on the allocation of federal money for New Orleans schools. As in previous meetings around the city, state and local school officials divided the audience of about 200 people at Dryades YMCA into three groups for free-ranging public-comment session. Each of those three groups Tuesday night was dominated by a vocal contingent of Lusher teachers, parents and administrators who insisted that their school’s buildings need critical repairs to the roofs, windows and air-conditioning systems that are ignored by the current master plan. “We’re not trying to say that work at other schools is not needed,” said Lusher High School principal Wiley Ates. “We’re just saying that Lusher has been taken out of the formula, but the building we’re in is in dire need of stabilization.”
