Have You Heard the Latest Joke In Civic Paricipation? Planning the Future of School Facilities as They Are Demolished
Bobble-head Alan talks about the Recovery School District facilities Master Plan. Leave your feedback at Recovery School District Questions.
We’ve been receiving email notifications from the School Facilities Master Plan. As our intrepid fellow citizen reporter, Matt McBride told us So much for the RSD master plan.
As I mentioned in my Monday email, the state-run Recovery School District has been pulling demolition permits for schools all over town. This is not entirely news.
What is news is that they are supposed to be engaging in a Master Planning process involving the public simultaneously. Tell me, how can the RSD engage the public in a plan if they’re not telling the public what’s going on?
We’re supposed to be filling out unscientific surveys, categorizing ourselves as parents or advocates, and sitting through visualization exercises. Through this guided meditation, we’re supposed to determine the future of the public school facilities in the City of New Orleans.
This is feel-good civic participation that has nothing to do with bricks and mortar. You can read about this latest planning process after the jump.
Read through the experience of Bart Everson in his post So dark the con of man.
We did some kind of silly exercise that involved talking to other people at our table about what we hoped the schools would be like in ten years. Then we were instructed to imagine a visitor coming to the future New Orleans and checking out the schools and being very impressed. As they leave the city, what’s their overall impression of the schools? We discussed this with the people at our table.
Then Steve Bingler got up and made a presentation. In 2006 Bingler was the target of many a blogger’s wrath — or at least skepticism. He derided the old “factory school†model and hyped a new model which combines public amenities with schools.
Then we all answered multiple-choice questions on a form, while discussing them with our group. The questions were phrased in such a way as to be extremely leading.
While we’re subjected to yet another humiliating civic particiation process purported to be citizen input on New Orleans public school facilities, the Recovery School District has spent the last two months pushing to demolish 27 facilities.
Three of these facilities are on the “K-8 School Planning Area B” meeting agenda tonight. Those are Hardin, Shaw and Lockett elementary schools. When you attend tonights meeting, you’ll be asked to sit at a table representing the facility that is most interesting to you. You’ll be invited to imagine the future of the facility.
You will not be told that the RSD already has a demolition permit for the facility of your imagination.
Is it all imagination? Are we asked to look at and review the actual facilities? Some of them are structures rich in the history of New Orleans and African-American history, or are we simply going to share our feelings?
Mrs. Aletha Davis Duncan says in the comments of Matt McBride’s Recovery School District demolition post…
RSD has completely ignored the history of our schools and are taking the easy way out, “tear them down” and to hell with the people who once went there and their feelings about their neighborhood schools…
I thought smaller class sizes (should be)was an important issue. Tearing down these schools will cause the new schools to take on a larger population – larger class sizes and back to the problem of teachers not being able to reach/teach effectively…
I oppose the demolition of Johnson C. Lockett and Valena C. Jones because of their historical significance to the neighborhoods in which they are located.
Oh, why does it matter? It’s obvious that our input into the future of these public buildings on public land are not important to the RSD. They are eager to raze building and close schools.
Why do they bother with the pretense of civic participation? Because they are required to and because it actually makes it easier down the road to show people the sign in sheets and say, yes the wholesale demolition of New Orleans Public Schools is just what these people wanted.
Here’s the agenda of tonights meeting.
K-8 School Planning Area B
Tuesday, February 19th, 2008 from 6-8 p.m.
Martin Luther King Elementary School, 1617 Caffin Avenue, New Orleans, La 70117
Discusses the following school sites:
- Armstrong Elementary School
- Colton Middle School
- Drew Elementary School
- Edison Elementary School
- Edwards Elementary School
- Frantz Elementary School
- Haley Elementary School
- Hansberry Elementary School
- Hardin Elementary School
- King Elementary School
- Lockett Elementary School
- Moton Elementary School
- Shaw Elementary School
Maybe, I’ll see you there. I always feel that I have to attend one of them in order to justify my criticism.
What do you have to say to this? I want to know. Especially you Tom and K.C. Please leave a comment, but do so under the Recovery School District Questions forum.
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I’d love to get your feedback, but no here.
Let’s all get together in the same forum and initiate an ongoing conversation on the Recovery School District.
Recovery School District Questions
Let me know what should be published at Think New Orleans on this topic.
[...] Gutierrez has already explained in an earlier thinknola post, that the Recovery School District is putting the community through a farce of an input process for [...]