Anger, Frustration as Hundreds of New Orleans Parents Turned Away From Public School Enrollment Center

New Orleans public school enrollment faltered badly Wednesday when hundreds of parents arrived at the lone resource center to sign up their children — only to be turned away for lack of staff to help them. It was an embarrassing fiasco for an enrollment process that has received national praise and aims to make life easier for families.

By 6 a.m., the line of applicants already snaked around First Pilgrim School on Marais Street, the location of the Recovery School District’s summer parent center, said Pilgrim Church janitor Cedric Woods Jr. By 9:45 a.m., it was around the block. With nowhere on site to park, cars lined the narrow streets of the St. Roch neighborhood, as did, later, the tow trucks.

“This is ridiculous. This is really sad,” said Monique Johnson, running out to move her car for the “third or fourth” time. She said she arrived at 6 a.m. to sign up her nephew and was No. 246 in line.

So numerous were the applicants waiting outside that a snowball truck, a voter registration team and a woman selling snacks from her car showed up to take advantage of the opportunity.

Sign-up was supposed to run from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. But at about 11 a.m., officials told everyone to leave and come Thursday to Lake Area New Tech High School, where they promised more space, said Latoya Roberts, No. 646, who took off work to no avail.

By 12:30 p.m., staff weren’t even giving out numbers anymore. Upstairs in the school, applicants were shuffled from room to room, sitting in folding chairs, while the OneApp team was serving only No. 121.

April Johnson, who arrived at 7:30 a.m., said when the officials gave out numbers they reported 300 people already inside the school.

Recovery School District Deputy Superintendent Dana Peterson confirmed that Wednesday afternoon. And 300 people was all the system was expecting, he said, based on past experience. But more than 800 showed up before noon, and there were only a dozen stations to serve them.

In response, “What we tried to do was to change our plans to accommodate everybody,” Peterson said. Wednesday’s line numbers will be honored Thursday, and Lake Area’s larger size means people will be able to wait more comfortably.

Peterson added he found it encouraging to see so much demand for New Orleans public schools. More than 35,000 students are already signed up in the OneApp system.

New Orleans has had a decentralized education system since after Hurricane Katrina. It’s now mostly composed of independent charter schools under the auspices of the state Recovery School District.

There are no default assignments to a neighborhood schools; all families must choose where to go. For the first several years, that meant a tiring scavenger hunt of dropping off applications at individual schools.

Starting in the winter of 2012, the Recovery School District began to centralize the process through OneApp, for its schools as well as some of those of the Orleans Parish School Board. All but 10 of the city’s about 80 schools now participate. Taking enrollment out of the hands of individual charter groups or schools is designed to ensure there’s no funny business and to lessen the work for parents.

The focus has been is on winter sign-ups through OneApp, with student-school matches made via computer. If families are happy with their child’s school, they don’t do anything. If they’re not happy or if the child is graduating, they choose as many as eight schools, and a computer matches students with available seats, using priority rules such as whether their sibling already attends. There are no waiting lists.

Almost 11,000 students filed OneApps in the first of two rounds. About 80 percent got one of their top three choices, according to state data. The OneApp team continues to handle enrollment and transfers throughout the school year.

But after the computerized matching process is done — for 2014-15, it opened in November 2013 and closed in early May — families who aren’t happy with their placement or who are new to the system must visit a resource center to enroll on a first-come, first-served basis. Wednesday was the first day for the summer sign-ups, after two months with no parental access to the system.

For that reason, “I knew it was going to be pretty crazy,” said Arielle McConduit of the Urban League, which supplies some staff to the parent centers. “Hopefully that was a learning lesson and it’ll change tomorrow.” She said her group had only one person at First Pilgrim, to help parents make up their minds but not to input data into the computer system.

Also possibly contributing to Wednesday’s overload: Last year, OneApp had several family centers and three rounds of computerized matches.

In the middle of the day, families exited First Pilgrim. Some were successful, but many were going home hungry and thirsty with no resolution. Several said they had gone through the computerized OneApp process but the school they wanted was not available. Arturo Lopez said the system had lost the paperwork for his daughter, who attends Lycée Français in Uptown.

Brenda Hutton was one of many parents who berated officials for disorganization. She had come, unsuccessfully, to enroll her nephew, Jamal Smith, at ReNEW Cultural Arts Academy in Uptown. “You told everybody to come one day, 7:30. … They should have known it would be a problem,” she said. “You know that our children have got to go to school!”

Latecomers were bewildered and angry, having thought they could arrive at any time. Kristi Rosales Fajardo, a community organizer with VAYLA, said the OneApp team knew she was coming to translate: “I spoke to an RSD employee (who) assured me that when I brought my families, they would be able to support. And now that we’re here, they’re telling us we need to turn around.” VAYLA has filed a civil rights complaint charging RSD and OPSB don’t give immigrant families equal access.

Peterson said there would be more stations to help families Thursday at Lake Area. That school is at 6026 Paris Ave. in Gentilly. Parents seeking placements must show proof of New Orleans residency and their child’s final 2013-14 report card. For kindergarten and pre-kindergarten, families must also supply proof of the child’s age.

The family resource center will remain at Lake Area High through July 18, then return to First Pilgrim.