








Post Hurricane Katrina, the city of New Orleans embarked upon an unprecedented experiment/innovation in urban public education. Following a state takeover of most of its public schools-107 of 128 and its dismantling of collective bargaining and subsequent summarily dismissal of unionized teachers education policymakers launched a rapid-fire (Miron, 2008) reform movement to convert most of its public schools to privately managed charter schools. Charter schools now hold a 70% market share. This is the largest in the US. Despite the fact that the state was the prime driver in the near wholesale move to convert existing schools to charter schools in particular former state superintendent (now deceased) Cecil Picard (Miron, 2008), the local school district, the Orleans Parish School Board (OPSB) actually implemented the reform. Specifically it provided authorization to the Algiers Charter Association to start-up five schools as a cluster of charter schools in the historic Algiers neighborhood located on the West Bank, across the river from downtown New Orleans. This neighborhood was located on "high ground" land, that is, in one of the areas that did not flood.
