Update: After publication, Lamplighter confirmed KIPP’s board voted on the 3-page resolution at its March 12 meeting. The certificated copy submitted to the Orleans Parish School Board indicates the resolution was prepared before the meeting.
Frederick Douglass High School students, parents and staff could not have known KIPP New Orleans Schools would vote to shutter the historic St. Claude Avenue building at what appeared to be a routine monthly board meeting last week.
The main agenda item for the 9-school charter network’s public meeting stated simply: “CEO Report.” The only vote listed was a monotonous meeting minute approval.
But KIPP New Orleans voted to shutter a 600-student school that day.
That’s problematic, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press attorney Virginia Harnick said in an interview.
“It’s jammed into a CEO report. It’s so opaque — and just for ‘information’ the public has no idea what’s going on,” Harnick said. “They have no idea that a vote is going to be heard about a school closure and that the vote is going to move students.”
In what was scheduled as a 5-minute report, CEO Rhonda Kalifey-Aluise, must have delivered seismic news to prompt the charter board to take up a school closure vote.