One year ago, NOLA Public Schools made a decision that the city of New Orleans, its historic French Quarter and, most of all, our families and children were best served by keeping the Homer Plessy School in the French Quarter.
A plan was devised to accomplish this. It was the right decision.
Now without any consultation or consideration of the community the administration has canceled that plan. This is wrong. This is insensitive to the city’s history and legacy.
The cookie-cutter approach of the administration is inappropriate for a historic school at the heart of the country’s most historic neighborhood.
Each generation of public school children at this school building has learned and lived our unique history: the Mississippi River, Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral, the musicians, the art in galleries and on the street, the parades, the character and the characters. That experience is itself an education.
As citizens of New Orleans, we owe this generation of children, and the generations of children yet to come, the unique experience of an education in the heart of this historic neighborhood.
The Plessy school has always promoted this experience and thus drawn a diverse and thriving student body.
The problems that arise from the long-deferred maintenance of the historic “little red schoolhouse” are understandable. But the plan to address and remedy them should be allowed to go forward.
This public school and these schoolchildren should remain in the Quarter.
It is what the school wants, what the children want, what parents want, and what the neighborhood wants. And it is what the city needs.
JOHN REED
New Orleans
Leave a Reply