The Two Pauls

Wednesday night I attended a meeting in Mid-City organized by Councilmember Midura where the residents of District A got to meet our two new state education leaders: State Superintendent Paul Pastorek and the Superintendent of the Recovery School District Paul Vallas. They're often referred to as "the Two Pauls."

Mr. Pastorek is an attorney who was a partner with the firm Adams and Reese for more than 20 years. He worked on the BESE school board from 1996-2004, and ruffled many feathers when he played political hardball against unions and worked to have Col. Al Davis become the Superintendant of New Orleans schools. That of course ended badly. W. Bush appointed Mr. Pastorek General Counsel for NASA, where he served from 2002-2004. He then returned to his law practice, until March of 2007, when he was annointed by Gov. Blanco and the BESE board to run Louisiana's schools. He'll oversee 69 school districts, 1400 schools, and about 650,000 students. It's a pretty hefty task for someone with neither classroom nor school administration experience. But Louisiana and New Orleans both have a long history of hiring attorneys to run our education system. Curiously not many law firms are looking for education experts to oversee their operations.

Pastorek chose Paul Vallas to run the Recovery School District on May 4th, shortly after Robin Jarvis announced she was retiring. Mr. Vallas has experience in urban school systems, as he oversaw Chicago schools from 1995 to 2001 and Philadelphia for from 2002 until the present. Test scores increased in both school systems under Vallas' supervision. Critics charge that he left both systems in shambles. Philadelphia's school system is being saddled with a $73 million debt. Vallas' family is moving to Chicago, and he will commute back and forth he says. I'd be more impressed if Pastorek and Vallas both enrolled their kids in RSD schools, but of course that will never happen. Vallas will officially begin his job on July 1, when Robin Jarvis steps down, which makes me curious why Jarvis is still being payed her $125,000 salary? By the way, Vallas was paid $275,000 in Philadelphia. By the way again, he looks like John Lithgow.

At the meeting Wednesday both Pauls asked that we be optimistic and hopeful. Mr. Vallas gave some bold and specific goals. The most interesting part of the meeting came from the questions and comments section. One teacher from Dibert asked that they quit referring to what is going on with education in New Orleans as "an experiment." I could not agree more. Others including myself voiced our frustration at 20 months of dealing with the RSD. When they took over our schools they promised transparency and community collaboration, and neither has happened thus far. Both Pauls promised they would work closely with the community. But this meeting wasn't about collaboration. Instead they told us what would happen to our neighborhood schools. Some would be demolished, one near me will be a high school, even though it's a facility meant for 7-8 graders and there is no parking. One school near me, Crossman, was listed to be an RSD school with 540 kids. The building can hold 250 at most. Moreover, there was a man in the audience from La Escuela Esperanza in Chicago who said Crossman was promised by Jarvis and others to him as a Spanish-language charter school. So still nobody really knows what is happening to our neighborhood schools, and we can't figure out who is making the decisions.

Meanwhile at Dibert today, the principal said the RSD was out measuring his playground in order to put extra modular trailers there so the school could hold more students next year. The mood was gloomy, but not because of the modular trailers. The LEAP scores were back and more than 70% of the 8th graders won't be going to the 9th grade because of their low test scores.