The clock is ticking in New Orleans on the fate of the only school run by the Orleans Parish School Board.
The Leah Chase School is named after the city’s “Queen of Creole Cuisine,” who was also the inspiration behind the Disney film The Princess and the Frog. The surrounding community, including the Chase family, are currently organizing and fundraising to keep the school open.
Less than two years after its founding, the school faces declining enrollment and budget deficits. The district is expected to decide whether to close the K-6 school on Friday, Jan. 9.
The school serves around 350 students, the majority of whom are Black and Latino, according to NOLA.com. NOLA Public Schools, the district’s official name, has about 41,600 students, 75% of whom are Black.
The Leah Chase School’s roots date back to the former Lafayette Academy, a charter school that closed in 2024 after receiving an “F” rating from the state. Then-school Superintendent Avis Williams recommended that the building be repurposed as The Leah Chase School, a public, school board-operated K-5 school. This year, the school added sixth grade students, with officials hoping to expand it to pre-kindergarten to eight grade.
The Business Council of New Orleans & the River Region, a nonprofit, nonpartisan, independent public policy advocacy organization, sent an open letter to the Orleans Parish School Board last month stating that the school is “unsustainable” and operating at a deficit greater than half a million dollars.
“New Orleans is losing population and its birth rate is declining,” the letter said. “That’s fewer taxpayers and fewer future students. Because of the declining student population, there are ample available seats in better schools.”
After Hurricane Katrina hit the city in 2005, New Orleans became the first all-charter system in the nation. Under the city’s school lottery system, students no longer attended schools based on where they live. Today, at least six school districts nationwide have at least 30% of their public school students enrolled in public charter schools, according to a report by the National Alliance of Public Charter Schools.
The Leah Chase School received a “D” grade from the state this year. Despite the school’s improvement from the Lafayette Academy grade, the Business Council letter also said parents are “choosing other schools.”
“It went from a failing school to a D school, right? Which, you know, nobody’s going to throw a party about having a D rating,” said Chris Edmunds, the father of a fourth grader at the school. “Making that progress in just one year in that short amount of time frame is astounding.”
Two of the “New Orleans Four,” Gail Etienne and Leona Tate, who desegregated New Orleans Public Schools alongside Ruby Bridges in 1965, have publicly supported the school, according to WDSU 6, a local TV station.
“These parents are advocating not for privilege, but for access; not for convenience, but for dignity; not for exclusion, but for the kind of public school education they know their children deserve,” Etienne wrote in a letter to the school board. “The name Leah Chase School carries a legacy all its own.”
