The Evolution of Education in New Orleans: From Segregation to a First Student's Pioneering Role
New Orleans, a city steeped in history and culture, has a complex and transformative story when it comes to its education system. From its inception in 1841 to the present day, the city's schools have navigated challenges of racial segregation, financial constraints, and the devastating impact of Hurricane Katrina. This article delves into the historical evolution of education in New Orleans, highlighting key milestones, struggles, and the ongoing journey toward equity and excellence, including the role of First Student.
Early Obstacles: Race, Class, and Inequality (1841-1954)
The New Orleans Public Schools system was established on March 26, 1841, with the support of Horace Mann, a champion of free public education. The goal was to create a unified system that promoted democratic ideals and provided educational opportunities for all. However, from the outset, the system was marred by issues of race and class.
The "birth certificate" of the city's public schools, Ordinance No. 159, explicitly limited access to "all children of proper age, of white resident parents." This exclusion of Black children reflected the prevailing racial prejudices of the time. New Orleans’ sizeable population of Free People of Color paid taxes to support public schools that were closed to them.
Following the Civil War, Louisiana politicians and business leaders employed various means to maintain segregation in schools, ultimately disadvantaging both white and Black students. On November 15, 1867, military officials turned over twelve Freedmen’s Bureau schools with 560 pupils to the Board of School Directors of the City of New Orleans. By April 1, 1868, public school superintendent William O. Rogers reported 3800 “colored” children in the schools.
During Reconstruction, New Orleans made strides in integrating its public schools. By 1870, Black Creole families and sympathetic legislators enforced laws to integrate the schools. However, this progress was short-lived. Superintendent William O. Rogers resigned in protest, and the return of anti-integration efforts led to the "New Orleans school riots" in December 1874.
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The Compromise of 1877 marked the end of Reconstruction and the dream of equal education, solidifying white supremacy in the South. Archibald Mitchell, a founder of the Crescent City White League, an organization that used violence to intimidate supporters of integration, served on the Orleans Parish School Board from 1877 to 1880. He falsely claimed that "public education has greatly deteriorated since colored and white children were admitted indiscriminately into the same schools."
Historians sympathetic to Mitchell's narrative perpetuated the myth of failed Reconstruction-era integration, which became the dominant narrative in schoolbooks in the early 1900s. In 1938, the Louisiana State Museum published "Carpet-Bag Misrule in Louisiana: The Tragedy of the Reconstruction Era Following the War Between the States," which documented "Louisiana’s Part in Maintaining White Supremacy in the South."
In 1908, city leaders expressed concern that proposed compulsory education laws would require African Americans to get an education, posing a threat to the white power structure. Controlling access to public education allowed political leaders to control elections, thereby safeguarding white supremacy. The inequitable system trapped generations in poverty and denied them the education needed to escape it.
In 1927, O.C. W. Taylor, a former public school teaching veteran, investigated the public schools serving African American children. In 1938, Louisiana’s State Superintendent of Education, T. H. Harris, admitted there was “no serious intention in most of the parishes to provide school facilities for Negro children,” and there was no “serious concern” about the matter.
The Civil Rights Era and Desegregation (1954-1970s)
Despite the Brown v. Board of Education ruling in 1954, which declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional, Southern states resisted integration. In 1960, Ruby Bridges became a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement when she was one of the first Black students to integrate William Frantz Elementary School in New Orleans.
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Ruby Nell Bridges Hall was born on September 8, 1954. Bridges was one of six black children in New Orleans to pass the test that determined whether they could go to the all-white William Frantz Elementary School. Bridges went to Frantz by herself, and three children (Gail Etienne, Leona Tate and Tessie Prevost) were transferred to the all-white McDonogh No. 19 Elementary School. All four 6-year-old girls were escorted to school by federal marshals during the first day they attended the two schools. Judge J. Skelly Wright's court order for the first day of integrated schools in New Orleans on Monday, November 14, 1960, was commemorated by Norman Rockwell in the painting, The Problem We All Live With. As Bridges describes it, "Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras." Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn't whimper. As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers except for one refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. On the second day, however, a white student broke the boycott and entered the school when a 34-year-old Methodist minister, Lloyd Anderson Foreman, walked his five-year-old daughter Pam through the angry mob, saying, "I simply want the privilege of taking my child to school". Child psychiatrist Robert Coles volunteered to provide counseling to Bridges during her first year at Frantz.
Challenges and Reforms Before Katrina (1970s-2005)
Even after desegregation, the New Orleans public school system faced numerous challenges. Funding limitations led to outdated and deteriorated facilities. Achievement levels and graduation rates lagged behind state averages. Governance and organizational structures were modified for efficiency, and regulations and programs were changed to promote equity within funding.
Hurricane Katrina and the Rise of Charter Schools (2005-2018)
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 devastated New Orleans, disrupting every aspect of life, especially education. Most school buildings were damaged, and students, teachers, and staff were displaced. The state quickly moved in and took over most of the schools, turning them into charter schools.
With schools closed, more than 7,000 people, including more than 4,000 teachers with an average of 15 years of experience, lost their stable, middle-class jobs. The city's teachers' union lost most of its power almost overnight. The plan wasn’t to run them - at least not for long - but to turn them into charter schools: publicly funded, privately run nonprofit organizations that have to answer to state or local school boards. By 2015, state officials were operating 50 charters and no traditional schools.
Charter schools were a bipartisan idea when the storm happened. They empowered individual school leaders to make their own decisions and parents to decide where to send their kids. The idea was to insert competition into public education. For New Orleans, it meant freeing schools from a system many people felt was barely functioning.
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In the early years, operators, especially those from outside the city, made a lot of mistakes. Some relied heavily on uncertified teachers. And Zervigón says operators were hesitant to invest in things that didn't directly correlate with higher test scores, including music and art programs, and football teams and marching bands. Some charters also followed a model, popular at the time, known as "no-excuses" discipline, which researchers have tied to higher suspension rates.
Over the course of the 2010s, officials also stepped in to address systemwide issues. Charters were renewed or closed based, in large part, on test scores. From 2011 to 2017, when the first charter schools were up for renewal, more than a dozen charter operators weren’t renewed, and their schools closed or changed hands. That pressure to perform led some schools to push out students they thought would bring down their scores, including by expelling them. So officials created a central enrollment system, taking away charter schools' ability to pick their own students, and they created a hearing office for expulsions. And after families filed a lawsuit alleging special education violations at some charter schools, a court order in 2015 led to regular reports from an independent monitor.
By 2018, local officials were on board with charters, and the state returned control of the schools to the city's school board. The next year, New Orleans' last traditional school, McDonogh 35 Senior High School, became a charter, making the city the first in the country to have an all-charter system.
Reunification and Continued Progress (2018-Present)
By 2016, public officials and community leaders agreed that conditions were progressing to reunite the RSD and OPSB schools under one elected local board, OPSB. After an open and publicly engaged planning process, the unified school district opened on July 1, 2018.
New Orleans' student test scores were among the lowest in Louisiana in 2005. By 2015, they had increased substantially. And in the 2024-2025 school year, scores were much closer to the state average than before the storm. Around 80% of students now graduate from high school on time, up from 56% before the storm.
However, opinions are still mixed. Last year, respondents were pretty evenly split when asked whether they thought public education was getting better or worse, and the highest percentage, 35%, said it had stayed the same.
The Role of First Student
First Student, a school bus transportation provider, played a crucial role in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The First Student school bus transportation facility in New Orleans moved to a permanent location, after having operated out of trailers since Hurricane Katrina.
First Student faced the same challenges as other New Orleans-area businesses immediately following Katrina: finding electricity, fresh water and vendors that were still operational to help them get back on their feet and back in business. Once the waterlogged, inoperable buses were towed away and trailers were brought in, the New Orleans team was able to reestablish the office and resume training and limited operations, said Rick Hendricks, location manager of First Student New Orleans.
Challenges of School Closures
In recent years, New Orleans' school board has closed an average of about two charter schools a year. Danielle Smith's daughter, Kyla, went through two school closures in five years before she graduated from a New Orleans high school in May. The second closure happened in 2024, after Kyla's junior year at Living School.
The school board considers a number of factors when deciding whether to close a school, but test scores carry the most weight. At a school board meeting in December of 2023, the district's superintendent recommended the charter not be renewed. Ultimately, the board voted to close it. Danielle Smith says she and her daughter were devastated.
The Future of New Orleans Schools
Carlos Luis Zervigón is now a member of the city's school board. He says now that the benefit of closing schools isn't as strong, it's time for a change. He thinks the district should run some schools directly when it makes sense, so it can be less reliant on charters to make sure the city's kids get a good education.
Last fall, for the first time since Katrina, the school district opened a new school of its own, and board members have asked the superintendent to think about what it would take to run more schools.
Zervigón points out that charter schools in New Orleans are more closely regulated than they were in the beginning, and they have far fewer freedoms than charter schools elsewhere. He says the fact that lessons have been learned, and problems corrected, in the last 20 years is evidence of the system's larger strength.
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