Does anyone care what we think?

When state education officials clashed recently with an East Baton Rouge school system desperate to keep control of a dozen of its worst schools, many parents passionately defended their children’s schools and their faculty.

225 wanted to understand better why more parents weren’t leaping at the chance for their children’s schools to be possibly improved, even re-invented. So we sat down with some of these parents and asked them to explain their allegiances, their fears, and most important, their hopes for their children.

Loyal to Banks

Oniecia Williams doesn’t see the state’s takeover of her children’s elementary school as just a change in management. The way she sees it, the state is closing Banks Elementary, which will hurt one of that struggling school’s rare strengths: its roots in its community.

When classes resume at Banks in the fall, a private charter school will be running it, and that means it’ll be a new school. Williams says she doesn’t believe that’s the best option for her 4th-grade daughter Kyeisha or her 3rd-grade son Derico.

“I see what’s going on at Glen Oaks and Prescott (middle schools). There is no big difference. Why take over this school and do the same thing?” she asks.

“If I saw good results at Glen Oaks, I would be willing [to support] … a state takeover,” she says. “I don’t think it will make a difference.”

Glen Oaks and Prescott have already been taken over by BESE and are now operated by Advance Baton Rouge as charter schools. Despite those schools’ ground-up overhaul of teaching methods and new, higher goals for students, Williams is not yet convinced the students are any better off today.

And while she wants improvements at Banks, she wants those improvements to come about under current management and with the existing teaching staff, most of whom live in the immediate Banks community.

Williams insists she is loyal to Banks, yet she tried to have her children placed in a different school. That opportunity arose last year when provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act allowed her to relocate to a better performing school. She tried to enroll them at J.K. Haynes Charter School but was told all the spots were taken. She also toured Bernard Terrace and Ryan Elementary schools, but she found classes there seemed crowded.

“A lot of schools are closed, and kids are bunched in one class,” she says. “I want them to learn, so we stayed at Banks.”

East Baton Rouge school officials say their classes remain within student-teacher ratios.

Still, Williams says, she feels Banks classes are less crowded, and her children “always have work. They have great teachers, and the principal cares.”

But the stakes are going up for her children.

This year will be Kyeisha’s first experience with the LEAP test at a school where more than 60% of 4th graders have been failing. In fact, BESE took over the school largely because of a lack of academic rigor to prepare students for state tests.

But Williams felt good about critical steps Banks was already taking to help students pass the LEAP. Her children participate in the school’s LEAP camp and the Training Connection program.

“I fault the parents [for student failure rates],” she says. “It’s not just the teachers … I don’t think a lot of the parents care.”

She believes what Banks really needs to thrive is more teachers, more volunteers, and more money.

Banks is already within state guidelines for parent-teacher ratios, system officials say, with no more than 26 students per class in 3rd grade or below, and no more than 28 per teacher in 4th and 5th grades.

Williams acknowledges the state’s takeover of Banks might mean improvement at the school, but she says the takeover could hurt those students from the immediate community who are most at risk. What if the charter school does not accept all the students who previously attended Banks, which means those students would face sometimes-long school bus trips?

“Many of these kids don’t have transportation to get to schools far away; if they miss the school bus, they won’t go,” she says.

Without transportation, some will find themselves on the streets during school hours and facing all the temptations that brings, which spells larger trouble for the community around Banks. “They will be idle … it’ll be more crime,” Williams says.

Her own connections to Banks may help explain her loyalty to its faculty. As a child she attended the school; she still lives and works nearby.

For years, the school has hosted the Miss Banks pageant, Community Against Drugs and Violence forums, and Black History Month celebrations. “I hope we don’t lose those things,” she says.

When Banks closes for the state switch, she plans to try again to move her children to another school in the local public school system, then either Redemptorist Catholic or Southern University Laboratory School.

But if those options don’t work out, she’ll have no other choice but to re-apply to the charter school that Banks Elementary becomes.

Communication is the real problem

Monika Cage describes herself as a mom who’s regularly on campus at Claiborne Elementary School, where two of her sons attend school.

In January, for example, she took king cake to her sons’ classes. Another time she went by to resubmit medical forms for her youngest son. “I’m always at the school,” says the 29-year-old mother of three who’s in the process of setting up a home business. “Anything that goes wrong, I’m there. I try to keep them on their toes.”

Yet inexplicably, Cage says she never heard anything about Claiborne’s academic problems or possible BESE takeover despite incessant news coverage. School system officials insist they sent letters home to parents, posted flyers at school, and delivered automated calling system messages to students’ homes.

Cage claims no one at school told her about the pending state takeover, nor the vote to allow the school to remain part of the local school system.

“They keep so many things hush-hush,” says Cage. “We should know what’s going on and not hear it on the news.”

Cage says she believes a lack of communication hampers the school. She concedes that attendance scores and grades are posted on the campus and that special tutoring is offered.

“How do you keep this away from your school? If the staff knows, the students and parents should know. Tell us something,” she says.

“We don’t know what’s going on. We have questions for everybody,” she adds. “If they [the state-supervised charter school operators] take the school, how are they going to run their policies? How are they going to make the school better? What changes do they want to make? And what happens if the schools stay the same?”

Although she is frustrated, Cage says she believes Claiborne has good teachers—it’s just that they’re “pushed to the limit without more help [in the classrooms].”

Cage thinks Claiborne’s problems are vast: too few teachers, too few parent volunteers, carpool lines that are unsafe from traffic, unruly students are a chronic school-wide problem, and there’s still hurricane debris on campus from 2008.

But like Banks, Claiborne maintains a ratio of 26-1 for 3rd grade and below.

Stepfather Andrew Cage says he worries for the boys’ safety. He has to weave through carpool traffic, buses, and walking children to pick up Dedrick, 8, and A’Ronde, 6.

The boys’ futures are up in the air. “Right now, my goal is to move them,” Monika Cage says, but her choices are few within the public system. Because Claiborne is her neighborhood school, her sons will be assigned to return there next year unless scores continue to fall this year. Then notices will be sent home to allow students to relocate to better-performing schools.

Skeptical of takeovers

Sheleta Smith’s children attend three different Baton Rouge public schools, so her views about who operates the schools are varied.

Sheleta Smith

Single mom with four children

Occupation: Security guard

Children: Mikesha, Park Forest Middle School 6th grader; Antonio, Sharon Hills Elementary School 4th grader; and Darius (9th) and Iris (11th), both at Istrouma High. Istrouma was one of four schools proposed for takeover by BESE, but which remain in parish school system hands for now.

She’s happy to say good riddance to Prescott Middle under charter operator Advance Baton Rouge. Mikesha, the youngest of her four children, had excelled at Prescott Middle until the charter school operator took over. The new operator seemed not to have as tight a grip on discipline as the former faculty, Smith, a contract security guard, contends. For example, some students are years older than their classmates and tend to disrupt classes, or worse, are a corruptive influence. “Mikesha said, ‘Mom, I can’t concentrate in class it’s so bad.’”

As a result, now she worries about what might happen if BESE takes over Istrouma High School where her two oldest children attend. “I expected it to be better since the state had taken over, but they have no control,” says Smith. “It’s more out of hand, and you see it the minute you walk on campus.”

“[A] charter [school] is supposed to be more like private school. This is totally different … this is worse,” she says. “The state is not doing a better thing. Where’s the improvement of the scores now? Since [the state] can do so much, what has changed? Has behavior been better? That’s the purpose of the takeover, right? But it’s been worse.”

Advance Baton Rouge spokeswoman Annie Morrison says perceptions are sometimes wrong, especially when based on misconceptions about charter schools.

“They [charter schools] are public schools, governed by the state,” she says. “The difference is because they have a personal school board they have a little more leniency and can create their own policies. There’s not as much red tape.”

While asserting school discipline is important, it’s crucial in a charter school’s early days to earn students’ trust, Morrison says. In certain situations where a traditional public school might expel a student, charter faculty often sit down with students and parents to find the roots of problems. For example, a student was ditching school daily. Teachers brought the student and her mom in, and the mom was stunned to learn her high school-age daughter couldn’t read. “She said ‘she can read, she reads the mail to me every day.’”

But for Smith and some other parents, progress at charter schools like Prescott does not come quickly enough. In February, Smith transferred her daughter Mikesha to Park Forest Middle, and she remains watchful of BESE’s decisions concerning Istrouma.

“It’s not a bad school,” Smith says. Istrouma routinely communicates with parents about student grades; it helps students make up failed tests, and successfully convinces many to stay after school to get a better understanding of assignments. “We always know what’s going on in the classrooms,” Smith says.

If BESE decides to take Istrouma Magnet High from the Baton Rouge system, Smith says she’ll move her children to Belaire High School.