A New Orleans East school could merge with another to avoid having the district shut it down.
Fannie C. Williams Charter School, a pre-K-to-eighth-grade school, has steady enrollment but low test scores.
It's one of two charters the district is reviewing early. The other is Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Charter Elementary School in the Lower 9th Ward.
Fannie’s charter runs through 2030, but under the district’s new accountability system, which took effect in July, the superintendent can step in early when a school keeps getting low grades from the state.
The school hasn’t earned a C since 2017. It's gotten Ds every year since, except in 2022, when it got an F. (Schools didn't get grades for two years because of the pandemic.)
Almost all New Orleans public schools are charter schools that are renewed on different cycles. Fall typically brings bad news for at least a few, and this year it's worse.
The city’s public schools have lost more than 4,600 students since 2020. Louisiana’s enrollment has also been declining, like in most other states.
“We are in very tough times for public education,” Fateama Fulmore, the district’s superintendent, told Fannie families at a meeting Thursday night.
Local education leaders have long said the city needs to cut extra seats and consolidate students into fewer buildings so resources aren’t spread too thin.
These conditions, along with a new state law that requires the New Orleans superintendent to respond to underenrollment, have increased pressure to act.
In addition to Fannie and King, nine schools are up for regular renewal. One of those schools' boards voted last month not to renew its charter, which could mean it closes. Fulmore will recommend which schools to keep open, and the district's board will vote in December.
While King officials say they’ll fight to keep their school open, Fannie’s leader told parents on Thursday that she’d worked out a solution: letting another group take over.
Fulmore backed the plan and thanked Fannie’s principal and CEO, Kelly Batiste, at Thursday’s meeting, calling her “exceptional.”
Parents applauded Batiste but criticized the plan, saying the merger would still effectively close the school.
Batiste told them that when she learned the district wanted to close Fannie, she “prayed, cried, did all the things.”
“But I landed at this partnership because, of all the options that we had, this is the best next step forward for our kids,” she said.
Fannie was a traditional middle school before Hurricane Katrina. After the storm, the state took over most New Orleans schools and reopened Fannie in 2007. Batiste has led it ever since, through its transition to a charter in 2011.
Fannie would join ReNEW Schools
Under the proposal, Fannie would join ReNEW Schools, which runs several schools in New Orleans East.
ReNEW would move students from its Schaumburg campus into Fannie’s building — since it's a higher-quality facility — pushing out most of the students there now. ReNEW says it has room for them at another school several miles away: Moton Lakefront.
Tanya Bryant, ReNEW’s CEO, said they’re “basically consolidating three schools into two,” though legally Fannie would merge into Moton.
Schaumburg, enrolls more kids than the others and is in an old building “with a lot of problems,” she said.
More than 100 parents and grandparents attended the meeting in the school’s gym, sitting in bleachers and folding chairs. As the meeting dragged on, their kids grew antsy, and Batiste took the mic several times to gently tell them to quiet down.
Many said they didn’t understand why their kids couldn’t stay in the building and pushed back on the district’s rationale that Fannie should close because it’s low-performing.
“I don’t know how y’all score, but your scoreboard is wrong,” said Juanita Thomas, who has nieces, nephews and grandchildren at the school.
Ashanti Smith lives near Fannie and graduated from the school. Her two sons have attended since pre-K. Her 8-year-old is autistic and nonverbal.
“This is a safe place for a lot of our kids that I feel like should not change,” Smith said.
She said the school takes good care of him. His classroom ratio is low: two teachers to 10 kids.
Smith said any change would be destabilizing. Routine is important for kids, especially her son.
“One day off a routine and it can be a hard day for everybody,” she said.
Thinking about leaving Fannie, she choked up.
“My son enjoys school," she said. "There have been times when we can’t keep him with shoes on, but when he knows it’s school, we have shoes on, we’re at the door, and we’re ready every day.”
Fulmore said ReNEW has promised to hire some Fannie staff and honor the school’s culture.
“Those things are being thought about so there’s enough continuity of support for children and staff as possible,” she said.
Bryant highlighted the merger's benefits.
She pointed to ReNEW’s dedicated programs for children with disabilities and the network's ability to pool resources across multiple schools.
