On Friday, May 6th, more than 230 East Baton Rouge Parish School System teachers received “impact letters,” perfunctory notifications that their positions at their current schools were being eliminated. If the “impacted” teachers were “interested in a new position with EBRPSS,” the notification read, they were “required to attend” a job fair the following Thursday.
According to some reports—rumors?—these weren’t the first letters to have been distributed, but they were the first brought widely to parents’ attention. Posts began circulating on Facebook the same day and over the weekend. A photo of the impact notice, a form letter—not even a letter, a flier—was shared and re-posted by many on Monday, May 9th. Its language was tone deaf, cold. The disregard it exhibited for teachers, for programs, for the students they serve was dispiriting. Parents were outraged.
Dr. Sito Narcisse, EBRPSS superintendent, defended the proposal to eliminate the targeted positions, declaring that teachers needed to be reassigned “in order to equitably provide for all our students.”[1] And here’s where I’m going to overly simplify the discussion of this issue a bit so that this post doesn’t turn into a dissertation.
1. Yes, the schools which serve students with the greatest needs often struggle to attract and retain teachers, particularly those with the most experience. That’s historically been a problem. The teacher shortage—and our fundamentally-flawed school accountability system—has only exacerbated this issue.
2. That some schools have more vacancies than others does not mean, as Dr. Narcisse has stated or implied, that the schools which he has targeted for cuts are currently “overstaffed.”
3. To try to force teachers to move to struggling schools in this manner in the midst of a teacher shortage is short-sighted at best. At worst, it’s designed to further destabilize the public school system and encourage the further proliferation of charter schools. Once again, parents could be motivated to pull the trigger to charter their child’s school in order to avoid losing beloved teachers.
This is not the first policy promoted by Supt. Narcisse which appears to encourage parents at magnet schools to pull a “parent trigger” to charter the school in order to avoid being subjected to harmful policies. It’s at least the third. Here are two others:
1. The First Verse: Early Start. In April 2021, less than three months after he assumed the role of EBRPSS superintendent, Dr. Narcisse proposed a revision to the school calendar for the following fall with a new start date two weeks earlier than planned. If his proposed calendar had been adopted, the first day of school would have been in July for all schools but charter schools. I wrote about the threat posed by the proposed calendar change in a blog post entitled, “EBR’s Katrina Moment.” (I hope you’ll take 4 minutes to read the entire post! Click here to do so.) Here’s an excerpt to summarize my point:
For this post I’m inclined to ignore Supt. Narcisse’s inane narrative that has been manufactured to obfuscate the real threat this proposal creates. The real threat lies in this telling detail which isn’t getting sufficient attention: Charter schools in East Baton Rouge Parish are not required to abide by this mandated early start. Supt. Narcisse acknowledged that in a recent radio program. The freedom to avoid the early start date will likely spur the further proliferation of charter schools, particularly ones that will serve middle and upper income families. It may even provide the impetus for some of the high-performing magnets to “pull the parent trigger” and convert to charter.
2. The Second Verse: Mandatory Dual Enrollment. In November 2021, just as the redistricting process was getting started, Supt. Narcisse introduced the very controversial proposal to mandate dual enrollment courses. Again, parents were alarmed. They were primarily concerned with the fact that enrollment was mandated. Regardless of students’ academic readiness, incoming freshmen would be required to enroll in college-level coursework. While additional opportunities for students was welcomed, mandating participation ignored the potential harm that could result. A failing grade on a dual enrollment course could undermine a student’s eligibility for TOPS. It would follow the student onto his or her college transcript. Parents with children in magnet schools were especially vocal, concerned that dual enrollment would undermine support for advanced placement classes. Once again, the proposal seemed to encourage parents with children in magnet schools to pull the charter trigger in order to avoid the ill effects of misguided policies. I re-shared my post, “EBR’s Katrina Moment,” and suggested that as people read it, they simply replace each reference to “early start” with “mandatory dual enrollment.” The fact that the proposal for mandatory dual enrollment was announced at a time when it distracted parents’ attention from the critical issue of redistricting was also troubling.
So now here we are at the third verse. Let’s call it: Teacher Impact Letters. When parents learned about the forced reassignments, they were outraged and suddenly galvanized into action. There were immediate calls for the school board to “Release Narcisse” even though—or maybe because—he’d only been hired a little over a year ago. A protest was held outside the job fair on Thursday, May 12th, and it was well attended—more than 50 people showed up to protest on behalf of teachers. It was covered in the local media—televised news reports, an article in the Advocate, and on BR Proud. At the time of this writing, a petition calling for Dr. Narcisse’s dismissal and circulated by the Friends of Public Education Facebook group has garnered 2,255 signatures. There’s another protest planned for Thursday, May 19th. Articles in the Advocate have mentioned the upcoming protest, providing free advertisement rather than simply a brief mention after the fact. (Typically the Advocate fails to sufficiently cover issues or events or candidates that would actually help in the fight for our public schools.) Many people have indicated they will attend the protest. Even one of my teenagers mentioned the protest and the possibility of showing up.
You’d think I’d be thrilled. I’m not. I’m worried. Not about the slim chance that Narcisse would in fact be fired. I would not shed a tear over that prospect.
No, I’m worried that it’s possible the momentum behind the effort to “release Narcisse” will be redirected to compel parents, particularly magnet school parents, to pull the charter trigger or to inadvertently support suspect proposals which would further destabilize our unified school system, effectively privatizing it from the inside out. I’m worried that too few understand this is potentially yet another “Katrina Moment.”
I’m worried too many are hoping it is.
I’m worried that those who have been pushing for charter schools see this issue as an opportunity to finalize the creation of the charter system outlined in “BR Portfolio System of Schools Concept,” a white paper first disseminated in 2014 by Chris Meyer, former CEO of New Schools for Baton Rouge and current CEO of the Baton Rouge Area Foundation, and they see an opportunity to galvanize parents to do it for them.
We can’t let that happen.
By all means, call for Superintendent Narcisse’s dismissal, but let’s presume for a moment that the protest and the petition are successful, that a majority of the current school board members vote to “release Narcisse.” Yes, that could provide relief from our immediate problem, but then what?
The same members who appointed Narcisse still serve on our school board. A majority of those members are still “business-backed,” first elected and/or continually protected by the pro-charter school financial interests. If by some miracle the board fires Narcisse, the same board is still responsible for hiring his replacement, and odds are they will do as they did before: ignore the voices of stakeholders and hire another business-backed superintendent determined to further privatize the system by hook or by crook.
If we want to fundamentally protect our school system from harmful superintendents and the insidious policies they promote, we must elect school board members who are not beholden to pro-charter school billionaires and business interests. And to elect such school board members we need a truly fair map that increases the number of single-member districts in order to reduce the elected official to constituent ratio and mitigate the influence of unlimited campaign contributions in our elections.
How convenient that the school board ratified a new map that failed to do just that the night before the “teacher impact letters” became public and parents were galvanized into action.
How convenient that some of the well-intentioned but misguided arguments being made in support of teachers dovetail nicely with a privatized/charter school governance structure.
How convenient that this issue—which could lend itself as cover for those inclined to pull the parent trigger to charter their schools—is getting ample coverage in our local media.
How convenient that the school board redistricting process—which could have galvanized parents to advocate for a fair map to restore some integrity to our school board elections—was not covered comparably by our local media.
If we really want to fight for our public schools, we must remember the following:
We as a community have the responsibility to provide all children regardless of race, socioeconomic background, or ability with a quality education. That education should be free, appropriate to a child’s needs, and allow a child to fulfill his or her potential.
In order to fulfill that responsibility, we must have the democratic—small d, democratic—control of our schools. We must be able to elect meaningful representation to a local board that oversees a unified public school system.
We cannot lose sight of that fundamental premise of public education—the democratic control of our schools. The forces driving charter schools absolutely want us to forget that premise. They don’t want us to be able to fight for what’s best for all the children in our community. They want to strip us of the democratic control, so they can strip us of that power. And if they do—if they, by hook or by crook, compel us to forsake democracy in a misguided effort to provide the children in this parish, including our own, with a quality education, then we will lose more than we can imagine.
We will lose not just the fundamental premise of public education. We could lose the fundamental premise of our form of government. Dr. Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation, explains that one of the purposes of public education is to instill democratic values and that you cannot teach what you do not model. Dr. Kahlenberg asks: “If our public schools are doing everything they can to reduce democratic voice, what does that teach kids?"[2]
Democracy doesn’t happen because you wish for it. Democracy is created by the governance structure you help build or maintain, and at this moment in East Baton Rouge Parish, the fight for a democratic governance structure begins with a fair school board map, a racially proportional map which increases the number of single-member districts in order to reduce the elected official to constituent ratio and mitigate the influence of unlimited campaign contributions in our school board elections.
So call for the school board to release Narcisse, but remember what it will take to really fight for our teachers and our children and our schools in the long run. And then keep fighting to restore the EBR School Board.
[1] Lussier, Charles. “100s of Baton Rouge school employees told to find new jobs, but district still has vacancies.” The Advocate, 10 May 2022. https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/education/article_a4661c24-cff6-11ec-a8b2-6708daf2d6b0.html
[2] Kahlenberg, Dr. Richard. “Modeling Democracy,” 09 May 2016 video clip on YouTube: