Lusher School

Settling in to New Orleans has involved searching for a school for Roxanne. She started kindergarten in Trinidad this past Sept 2007. She was out of school for two months, joining Agnes Bauduit Elementary in early February. Just this past week we got a form from Bauduit asking whether she would be attending next year. That was a problem. It is a long way, but we have bus service. I've submitted an application to International School of Louisiana for the french program next year and we did apply to Audubon Charter trying to get into french language kindergarten this year. They wouldn't let her in; they may allow her into french language kindergarten next year. That would make her a six year old starting kindergarten. For the second time.

Well, this all has been weighing on my mind; what to do? What to do? So I stopped by my actual local school on friday to drop off an application. That school is Lusher School. It is a charter school about four blocks away. Turns out we are in fact within the attendance district, which functions as a normal school; if you live there, you get into the school.

Lusher is one of the few schools in New Orleans which gets good ratings and good test results. People resort to blackmail and bribes to get their kids in there. But it does not have a french program. We wanted to get into Audubon french program or the International School program so that Roxanne could claim her birthright Haitian citizenship and run for Prezidan d'Repiblik.

What to do?

Agnes Bauduit playground

Yesterday, Saturday the 16th there was a playground building scenario at the Bauduit school. Our Recovery School District school. There were signs requesting 200 or so adults to help build the playground. I showed up around 9:30 and there was a good crowd assembling playground equipment and building planter/bench thingies. The strange thing was that seemingly all the brown folks were staff of the school and the civilians were all blan. This seems out of order because I haven't seen any blan students here, so I assume that the parents are mostly noir as well.

There were a ton of young blan with Americorps and a volunteer organization (name forgotten) and old folks who looked like church volunteers. There were some brown ladies who cooked a fine red beans and rice lunch, but no noir parents working on the digging or assembling or hammering that I could see. Disappointing.

Roxie is starting to like the school after one week. Kindergarted lasts from 8am till 3:15pm, quite a contrast to the 8:30 to 12:30 hours of the Trinidad Union School kindergarten.

Finding kindergarden in New Orleans

The public school system here in New Orleans is a confused mess. All the schools around us, the Carrollton district, are charter schools and application is required way in advance. We are here now, re-locating from Kalifornya, and need to get Roxanne into a kindergarten.

We've been to the Audubon school which has a Montessori system and a French system. We want to get Roxanne into the French school so she can become fluent in real French, not just Kreyol. Then she can claim her Haitian citizenship some time in the future and become Prezidan d'Repiblik. They give a real run-around there tho, and are unable to give advice on how to find 'just a school'.

Friday the 8th of February we submitted a full application to Audubon after finally getting all the required proofs of residence. Then they tell me that two full years of schooling in French is required before 1st grade. They didn't say that before.

So after tooling around the various school district web sites (no one will answer a telephone here) I discovered something called the 'Welcome School' on Poydras. There are two separate school districts within the same boundary; Recovery School district is run directly by the State, and NOLA Schools seems to have nothing but Charter schools which one must apply to a year in advance.

I went over to the Welcome School (no one at the local schools ever mentioned this place) and after explaining that I want to transfer into kindergarden, they actually found me a school and gave me a yellow sheet of paper. This yellow sheet is important; it actually gets you into school. Went over to the Agnes Bauduit elementary school with the majik yellow sheet and presto! Roxie is going to school on monday. It is a long way away, but they will have bus service for her in about a week.

The transportation system for these schools scattered all over the city must be crazy.