








The Jan. 5 session offered a stark contrast to the pre-Katrina rowdiness that usually accompanied monthly Orleans Parish School Board planning meetings.Instead of sitting side by side at the front of the room in the administration building in Algiers, five of seven school board members faced each other while sitting around a table at the New Orleans Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau on St. Charles Avenue.Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, sat at the head of the table flanked by OPSB members Una Anderson, Lourdes Moran, Heidi Lovett Daniels, Cynthia Cade, Phyllis Landrieu, acting superintendent Ora Watson, chief reconstructing officer Bill Roberti and attorney Regina Bartholomew. Board members Torin Sanders and Jimmy Fahrenholtz did not attend.There were no public outcries, no banging gavels, no whispering. Their purpose was clear.I want to see if we can get the board to come to some agreement about where you're going, said Casserly. You're going to have to put your personal and political issues aside. If this board cannot pull together, the chance of success is very poor.The Washington, D.C.-based Council of the Great City Schools is a coalition of 66 of the nation's largest urban public school systems.
