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- [00:00]
Narrator
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Ravi Gupta
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- [00:29]
Ravi Gupta
Contact T Mobile Phone hello everybody, this is Ravi Gupta, CO host of Majority 54, which is here on the Midas Network and airs every Wednesday. I've been working with the brothers for years and this year we've been working together on a special project. It's called where the Schools Went. It's a five part podcast series all about New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina and how the schools have changed dramatically in that city and what that means for all of us all around the country. It's all about the politics, the policy, government, service, idealism, you know, insiders and outsiders. It's got drama, it's got inspiration, and it's all about the most important functions of government, which is taking care of our kids, educating our kids. And we spoke to over 50 people as part of the story and we're dropping here our second episode. This one's all about a school called George Washington Carver, which was central to a lot of the debates and changes that were happening in New Orleans after the storm. If you really liked this episode, go to where the schools went, wherever you get your podcasts and subscribe there and you'll get the rest of the episode. So that's where the schools went. Wherever you get your podcasts. Here we go. What really makes a school great? Impressive college admissions? An obsession with literacy? Strong test scores? Or is it hallways that feel safe? Educators who remember your name? What about sports? Marching bands? The rituals that turn a building into a memory? Most of us would probably say all of the above. But what happens when you don't have the luxury of all of the above? When your city is in crisis, when the money is tight, the clock is ticking, and every decision feels like a trade off? What do you choose to build first when you can't build it all at once? And maybe most importantly, who gets to decide? In this episode, we'll explore those questions through the story of one school, a school with a famous Name a school that became a battleground over who has the right to shape the future of an entire neighborhood. Amravi Gupta. This is where the schools went. The 1940s brought a wave of migration to New Orleans. The black population alone surged by 20%. But the infrastructure didn't follow. Housing was scarce and the overcrowding issues didn't stop. Stop at the front door. The first high school for black students in New Orleans had opened in 1917. By the end of the 1950s, the city had added just two. More classrooms were packed. Federal money came in to build a sprawling new housing project, which would eventually include a locally funded high school. Officials chose a patch of swampy land in the 9th Ward west of the Industrial Canal, far from the city center and the white neighborhoods. They named the housing project Desire, after the street that cut across the land.
- [03:40]
Oscar Brown
All right, so we're in a Desire neighborhood. It's called the Desire neighborhood because of the Desire housing project.
- [03:47]
Ravi Gupta
This is Oscar Brown, 9th Ward resident, speaking from the Thrive 9th Ward Community Center. He's walking me through Desire, where generations of black families have lived.
- [03:58]
Oscar Brown
And I have friends, mentors. They talk about the beauty of Desire when it first was built, about how fascinating it was finally for them to be in their own home. They grew up family of 12 in a one or two bedroom because that's all that they was able to afford. And now they had their own rooms and it was affordable.
- [04:22]
Ravi Gupta
Construction began on the complex in 1949. And back in those early years, hopes were high and pride was deep. The city picked the site in part because the land was cheap, a former dump. The ground was so unstable that engineers had to drive 70 foot pilings into the ground just to keep the buildings and even the sidewalks from sinking. Our new Desire Square building is one.
- [04:47]
Narrator
Step closer to reality.
- [04:51]
Ravi Gupta
Six weeks before the first families were set to move in, the tenants association released a report calling the facilities, quote, unsafe for human habitation and a blight on public housing in New Orleans. Soon after construction of Desire began, the city bought a 90 acre tract just north of the new housing project. It would become a sprawling school campus. They'd call it George Washington Carver. Whether by design or neglect, the city had created a separate world, one built on the margins, physically and politically, what historian Walter Stern called an educational soweto. Invoking the infamous segregated South African township, Carver became a promise kept and a promise broken all at once.
- [05:43]
Oscar Brown
Over time. If you put so many people into one area, it was too many people. It was very little resources. You're going to start Having problems. And I think that's what happened to desire.
- [05:55]
Ravi Gupta
Oscar grew up in the 80s and 90s, three decades after desire first opened its doors. By then, the neighborhood was struggling. And while Oscar is a proud Carver alum and a current parent, he acknowledged that the school had also changed my experience with Carver.
- [06:11]
Oscar Brown
It was a fantastic school. My friends that I met there, you know, it's lifelong. But it was some things that happened in that school that was just products of what was happening in the community.
- [06:24]
Ravi Gupta
In 1999, the state labeled Carver one of 50 unacceptable schools in Orleans parish. Roughly half its students were dropping out before graduation. There were widespread allegations of sexual assault, violence, violence, and the use of narcotics at the school. It was hard to imagine things could get any worse. And then hurricane Katrina hit. The Desire neighborhood was devastated. Built on swamp and bordering a levy, it was the worst possible terrain in the event of a hurricane. Carl Washington, a lifelong desire resident who graduated from carver in the 80s, remembers the damage well.
- [07:08]
Carl Washington
So that area received eight, nine feet of water. It wiped out the lower nine. It wiped out the upper nine. It took many of lives. It took many of homes. It took many destruction. It just. It was devastating to that area.
- [07:27]
Ravi Gupta
Benzopyrene, a carcinogen, was detected in some areas at more than 50 times the allowable limits. As one New Orleanian wrote of the ninth ward at the time, it seemed that every inch of it was covered by a thick, mysterious sludge containing all manner of nasty chemicals. That sludge covered cars, doorsteps, entire blocks, everything in its path. Eventually, it reached Carver, and for a while, the school, like much of the neighborhood, sat silent, Almost like someone had turned back the clock to 1949 before a single brick had been laid, before the school or the neighborhood around it even existed. With the neighborhood destroyed and its population displaced, some officials doubted the area would ever again need a high school. The city had access to federal dollars to reconstruct a number of schools, and those schools that had suffered the worst damage would be costlier to reopen. Carver alumni, parents, and longtime 9th Ward residents began to organize, sign petitions, and show up at meetings. Carver was clearly a unifying institution, a source of pride and a patch of stability at a time when the community.
- [08:46]
Carl Washington
Needed one most vibrant community sports band. It was an ecosystem for community. So it was desire housing project. It was Sampson Park. It was Carver. Carver was the thing when it came to sports. Being in a band, being in a community, it was a great experience for me@carver.
- [09:11]
Ravi Gupta
NFL hall of Famer Marshall faulk went to Carver he put it simply, a lot of life lessons were taught at that school and in that football program. My coach got me off the street and taught me to believe in myself. That's what football can do in a school where kids don't have a lot of other things. These sentiments, they're what fueled Carl knowing.
- [09:33]
Carl Washington
The importance of what Carver did and meant to the desire community area. Ain't nowhere in the world we were going to allow someone from somewhere else to come dictate to the community, to the realm nation, that Carver was going to be closed for good.
- [09:55]
Ravi Gupta
This was about more than a building. It was about legacy, dignity, and the right to reclaim what was theirs. And eventually, the state agreed Carver would rise again. It was a huge victory against difficult odds. But securing the building was just the beginning. Who would run the new Carver? The alumni community had their ideas, the state had others. And the gap between them was about to crack wide open. In the years after Katrina, a new charter school opened four miles from Carver. It was called PSI Academy. And while I was leading schools In Nashville in 2011, I was invited to visit the campus, if we even want to call it that, was anything but glamorous. A chain link fence surrounded by a cluster of trailers that were donated by a local Catholic school. It even had wooden boardwalks connecting the classrooms. Despite its humble exterior, what I saw inside was impressive. Classrooms buzz with focus. Teachers weren't just teaching lessons. They were coaching, pushing, encouraging. Here's a clip from an old video from Teach4All where a school leader from Psy is describing her goals before she observes a classroom. I note what I want the teacher to keep doing. Slight changes I want them to make. And what they're changing should be related to their current instructional goal. So I look up each teacher's instructional goal and I look to see, are they, like, actually working toward meeting that goal? Adults were constantly refining their craft. They were expected to move fast, teach well, and never blame circumstances for low results. Those results, the data was their touchstone. So much so that in the staff office, there was a framed photo of the word data with a heart drawn around it. That culture also required structure. Uniforms were checked down to the socks. The school day was longer. Students received weekly and sometimes daily progress reports tied to behavior, effort and performance. This was a no excuses school. It prioritized discipline, rigor, and academic excellence. The student body was more than 90% black, more than 90% low income. Students mainly came from the Ninth Ward, from the very same neighborhoods that Carver had long served. There was no championship football team no award winning marching band, no alumni base, no history. Because unlike Carver, which had deep roots in the community, Tsai Academy was built by outsiders. He was the brainchild of Ben Markovitz, who was 28 years old when he founded TSAI just six years after graduating from Harvard. The Washington, D.C. native had one mission.
- [12:42]
Ben Markovitz
What I would say is non negotiable and never changes is our goal of getting all our students ready for college success.
- [12:49]
Ravi Gupta
He hired a staff of mostly overachieving recent college grads. Enthusiastic, idealistic, bright eyed, many had come through Teach for America and they delivered. The average student had entered multiple grade levels behind. Here's how one Psy teacher described her incoming ninth graders in an interview with Education Week. They come in at about a 4.5 grade point level. We have several that are emerging. Readers that cannot read or can read only basic words and can't decode words and have never been taught phonics. And I'm sorry, that makes me furious. But by senior year, those students were posting some of the highest ACT gains and state test results in the city. In 2010, 98% of Tsai's first graduating class was accepted to college. Almost all of them were first generation college students. There were plenty of critics who questioned Tsai's success. They pointed out how most of its teachers were young and white. How Tsai suspended more than three times as many students than the average school in Louisiana. In one early cohort, only 52 of the 83 students who began as freshmen made it to senior year. But even with those criticisms, Tsai's success took the nation by storm. Ben was even interviewed by Oprah. So today we're here with founders, with principals and teachers for some of the.
- [14:09]
Elizabeth Robeson
Most groundbreaking schools in the country.
- [14:12]
Ravi Gupta
These school leaders are doing whatever it.
- [14:15]
Elizabeth Robeson
Takes, taking the hours and the sacrifice to make sure.
- [14:19]
Ravi Gupta
And at the end of his live interview, he accepted a million dollar check from Oprah's Angel Network.
- [14:25]
Elizabeth Robeson
So the Angel Network is giving each.
- [14:26]
Ravi Gupta
Of your charter school networks one million dol. A million dollars for you. A million dollars for you. A million dollars for mastery. A million dollars for Psy Academy. A school that had started in trailers, surrounded by fences, run on urgency and belief, was now held up as a national model. But with shallow roots in the community it served. Did it belong in New Orleans? At first, Tsai brushed off its critics and focused on growth. Tsai Academy evolved into Collegiate Academies, a network built to replicate its model across the city. The city of New Orleans had received a $2 billion FEMA settlement to rebuild school Buildings. Instead of completely new schools like PSI Academy, the city needed to use their new funds to reconstruct existing legacy institutions. That's when Ben Markovitz started eyeing Carver.
- [15:39]
Ben Markovitz
It also sort of captivated us in a great number of ways. Specifically, it was in a part of the Ninth Ward where a lot of our students were coming from already.
- [15:49]
Ravi Gupta
Collegiate began to prepare an application for Carver's charter. But unbeknownst to them, others were already doing the same. The alumni. Michael Stone, former CEO of New Schools for New Orleans, recalls the moment a group of Carver alums went to Paul Vallis to fight for the right to rebuild the school. Vallis was the superintendent of the Recovery School District at the time. The RSC was responsible for figuring out who would receive the charter to run the school. Valas said to them, look, here's a little bit of money. Write a charter, and you can have.
- [16:26]
Narrator
A chance to run the school.
- [16:27]
Ravi Gupta
So that's what they did. The sequencing here is a bit hazy, depending on who you ask. But what's clear is at some point, Paul Vallis encouraged members of the Carver community to submit a charter application, framing it as their best chance to reclaim the school.
- [16:43]
Narrator
The application got rejected, and they got pissed.
- [16:48]
Ravi Gupta
So then they wrote another charter. They submitted it to the state.
- [16:52]
Narrator
The application got rejected by the state.
- [16:54]
Ravi Gupta
Board, and they got more pissed. According to reporting from NOLA.com and accounts from Reverend Willie Calhoun, the alumni group submitted applications to the Recovery School District several times. Alumni Carl Washington told us, not every group vying for a charter was up to the task.
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Carl Washington
Here you have all these people come in saying they want to be charter president, they want to do this, they want to be chartered. All of a sudden, everybody wants to be a charter operator, have their own charter school. And most of them wasn't astute or intelligent enough or academia enough to run no charter. They all saw, oh, this is the new hustle. This is the new thing. Let's do charter. So they all was on the charter hustle.
- [17:38]
Ravi Gupta
Chris Meyer, who eventually landed at the rsd, was involved in those Carver discussions. He agreed with Carl, sort of.
- [17:48]
Narrator
How.
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Chris Meyer
Do we pick the right operator for this school? The community really wanted to run it themselves. And while we loved that passion, they didn't have any particular kind of education background. Right.
- [18:00]
Ravi Gupta
Collegiate was approved to take over the school. Ben Markovitz was aware it wasn't a popular decision amongst the community.
- [18:08]
Ben Markovitz
I imagine there's quite a bit of justification for this feeling that they were empowered to run the school themselves and then rejected without given Much reason as to why. Now collegiate academies are invited to apply by the same people who rejected them and then given approval without much justification as to why. This is, of course, deeply upsetting. Yeah, rightly so.
- [18:33]
Ravi Gupta
Many in the community felt betrayed. Here's how Oscar Brown describes it.
- [18:37]
Oscar Brown
Biggest thing is outsiders coming in. And there's always been this political dark cloud over the city of New Orleans, where politics have been a little bit shady. And I think immediately for those folks, that was the first thing that came up as part of a regime. We knew it wasn't going to happen, and things like that.
- [18:58]
Ravi Gupta
There were two fundamentally different visions for the school's collegiate academies, led by Ivy League outsiders, focused almost exclusively on academics and college preparation. Then there was the segment of the community that felt shut out, the Carver alumni group. They were fighting for tradition, ritual, and identity. Ben knew he was an outsider. He had a sense for how hard it would be to overcome skepticism.
- [19:24]
Ben Markovitz
I don't know what it means to have gone to that school.
- [19:29]
Ravi Gupta
But he didn't thank the primary community. He needed to speak. Serve was the Carver alumni group.
- [19:34]
Ben Markovitz
Because the Carver alumni group is the Carver alumni group in all caps. It's not the group of all Carver alumni. It's not the group of parents who could send their kids to Carver right now. It's a very distinct group, and they're important, but they're not also necessarily the stakeholders closest to this project. Of course the kids, their families are.
- [19:57]
Ravi Gupta
The RSD held a series of community meetings to explain their decision, and those didn't go well. Chris Meyer can still remember them clearly.
- [20:06]
Chris Meyer
We pull up, and there's a human chain in front of the building. Protesters before this meeting were all standing there locking arms.
- [20:16]
Ravi Gupta
A coworker approached him.
- [20:18]
Chris Meyer
So she said, hey, just let them do their chant for a minute, and we're going to let you through. And I said, all right, cool. Yeah, no, not a problem. So they're demonstrating, doing their thing. They let us into the parking lot. We pull up, we go into the meeting. And my job that night was to communicate that we had determined the right school for Carver, the right school partner and operator. I get two words, maybe three out of my mouth, and the whole meeting just erupts in chaos. There's yelling, there's screaming. There's. You know, we didn't even get to naming who it was. It was just like, who are you to tell us this is the right school? And Eddie leans over to me. He's like, I think it's time for us to go. So I walk Outside to my car and I find that all my windows had been bashed in.
- [21:09]
Ravi Gupta
There was even glass in his child's car seat. Tensions became so high that education leaders across the city, even those who had previously supported the original decision, questioned if it was the right move. A mediator stepped in to help broker a piece. Collegiate Academies went ahead with plans to run Carver. In 2012, the phased takeover of the school began. The man leading Collegiate's effort was Jerrell Bryant.
- [21:36]
Narrator
I loved school. I still tell kids to this day I missed one day of school until senior skip day. So I was just a lover of school.
- [21:46]
Ravi Gupta
Jerrell was a Yale graduate from New York City, a rock star dean of students at Tsai Academy. He'd stood on the stage next to Ben Markovitz when Oprah had handed them that million dollar check. And now he was tasked with taking over one of the most iconic black high schools in New Orleans history. Well, kind of taking over. Initially, Carver split in two, or depending on how you categorize it, three separate programs. Collegiate Academies ran its version of Carver from modular buildings, trailers set up behind the original Carver campus. While construction on the new school building was underway. One program was run by the RSD for a few years until its students graduated out. There was one shared football team, shared extracurriculars, shared name, but an entirely separate leadership, staff and school culture. It's okay if you're confused. Most people were. The community was for students, parents and alumni. It wasn't clear who actually was Carver anymore. Jerrel got a call on the very first day of school.
- [22:51]
Narrator
The persons in alumn says, you know, have some concerns that you're not running this school the way alums expected it to be run or wanted it to.
- [22:59]
Ravi Gupta
Be run the way the school should be running. The alum was talking about Carver's culture, But culture was only one of Djurrell's concerns. At the top of his list were academics. Now, hardcore school leaders will argue that academic excellence is culture. But for the purposes of this episode, when I use the term, I mean non academic elements of a school like co curriculars and community ritual. Drell was working 80 hour weeks with his team trying to make sure that Collegiate's Carver would achieve gains in core subjects. This focus led to an unforced error.
- [23:35]
Narrator
I never had on my life bingo card, being able to discern so many shades of green. But I made the seismic mistake of thinking a blue polo was gonna be okay out the gate.
- [23:45]
Ravi Gupta
He's referring to school colors. And for Carver alums like Oscar Brown. The green and orange were sacred.
- [23:52]
Oscar Brown
The color's gonna change. You know, we've seen Kennedy get changed to lake area and. And not only did the name change, the colors change. So Kennedy colors was blue and gold. And then when lake area took over and the colors was red, white and blue. So I think those things was happening across the city and I think it was people saying, wait, hold up, hands off, C. Like, we want the green and orange. It's very distinctive. You know, when people see those colors, they tend to know that you're from Culver.
- [24:26]
Ravi Gupta
It was a learning moment for Jerrel.
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Narrator
That was really the first time I had a clear understanding of expectations here. My relative success is not going to be just index to what the organization has said is good.
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Oscar Brown
Right.
- [24:42]
Narrator
There are going to be some other arbiters here.
- [24:46]
Ravi Gupta
At the end of the year, Dharrel and his team celebrated their strong Algebra 1 scores, some of the best in the city. They saw it as a sign that their model was working. But the achievement didn't seem to make a difference in the broader community. They wanted what Carver had always rituals, pride, enrichment, sports, Friday night lights, a homecoming game, a marching band. When I asked Jerrell if they even had a marching band in their first year, he paused.
- [25:15]
Narrator
We did. But remember, you had this 10 through 12 recovery school district. And so the fact that I really can't even answer you conclusively, like, what did we have? What were our kids doing in year one, Right.
- [25:29]
Ravi Gupta
Jerrel couldn't even remember if they had a band. It tells you that in those early years of the new Carver, academics weren't just the top priority, they were almost the only priority. While the community was hungry for extracurriculars, it doesn't mean everyone ignored the academic growth. Carl Washington noticed.
- [25:49]
Carl Washington
I would say Jerrell, I was impressed with his ability to manage a school from academia perspective, engage in the students. And I told him I was with him for that. When I'm with him, I'm with him.
- [26:06]
Ravi Gupta
He just didn't understand why Collegiate seemed to care so little about the importance of co curriculars.
- [26:12]
Carl Washington
If you didn't understand Carver Ram, the mighty Ram nation with basketball, football and band in the community, you shouldn't even took that job. You shouldn't even took that job because that's big. That's big, big, big. Not just in the area, in the whole city of New Orleans and probably in other areas.
- [26:30]
Ravi Gupta
The year ended much like it started, with strong academics, but a growing chorus of outside critics calling their very legitimacy into question. Before long Those questions started coming from inside the building, too. By the winter of 2013, the pressure finally boiled over. On November 20, close to 100 students walked out of Carver in protest. That year, over half of Carver students had been suspended at least once, and they were frustrated by what they saw as an excessive discipline and an overly strict school culture. They were made to walk on tape lines in the hallways. A student said he'd been sent home for wearing the wrong shoes, another for chewing gum. One student told a reporter, I'm tired of school rules and walking on lines. You get suspended for coughing, you get suspended for sneezing out loud. The Southern Poverty Law center wrote a letter to the school criticizing the suspension rates and warning that the discipline policies may be discriminatory. Three parents held a press conference announcing they were withdrawing their children from Carver. Enough is enough.
- [27:36]
Elizabeth Robeson
Standing at the gate of Psy Academy and George Washington Carver School on Reed Boulevard in New Orleans east, parents, teens and activists speak out against what they call oppressive condition.
- [27:46]
Ravi Gupta
Students issued a list of demands. They wanted more lenient disciplinary rules and better lunches. Carver's leaders sat down with parents, community members and elected officials. Here's how Jharrell Bryant remembers that time.
- [28:02]
Narrator
It was, I mean, confluence of events, some national backlash against no excuses. Broadly, some forces here locally. Carver was always going to be a hotbed because of what it meant to the ninth Ward, what it meant to the city. It was one of the historically black high schools. I have no sense of the depth of expectations, real or perceived or intended or unintended promises made to stakeholders about what they would control, he says.
- [28:32]
Ravi Gupta
There wasn't a single spark, but rather a slow build of frustration. Emotional, cultural, political.
- [28:39]
Narrator
I am laser focused on trying to keep my staff together, trying to make sure kids are safe. You have some kids who, maybe their mom or someone at church or someone else are telling them, these people don't treat you right. You don't need to go in here. I'm telling you that right. You have some kids saying, Mr. Brian, I don't know these people. I'm absolutely coming into my building.
- [28:58]
Ravi Gupta
In June 2014, the Advocate published a graphic that laid it all out. Suspension rates, test scores side by side. For readers, it confirmed a troubling academic results at the expense of student dignity. Among those speaking out was Reverend Willie Calhoun, Carver alum and one of the community leaders who had applied unsuccessfully for a charter to run the school. He told the Advocate, I think some of these acts are criminal and some of these things need to be litigated. News of the Controversy at Carver spread far and wide, making headlines across the country. I even heard about it back in Nashville. One of the most persistent critiques hanging over that period had nothing to do with discipline policies or test scores. It had to do with representation. Elizabeth Robeson was an outside organizer who questioned the legitimacy of the staff.
- [29:52]
Elizabeth Robeson
All these white people are coming into the city through Teach for America. They have no experience teaching whatsoever, and they start these ridiculous salaries. 50,000 a year. Whereas you had Knopps teachers work a whole career and never see that kind of money. I mean, it was just a taking a mass taking of public money.
- [30:13]
Ravi Gupta
For what it's worth, Elizabeth herself is white and not from the Ninth Ward. But it doesn't change the fact that Ben Markovitz and the majority of the Collegiate staff were also white and from either outside of the neighborhood or the city. Elizabeth also seemed to believe that Collegiate was deeply unpopular in the Ninth Ward.
- [30:32]
Elizabeth Robeson
I never met a parent who was on board with the program. Never. Of course, I didn't meet every single parent. I can just speak from my experience that I never met a parent who was enthralled or in favor of what their children were forced to experience every day.
- [30:52]
Ravi Gupta
It's hard to imagine she didn't find a single parent on board with the program. According to reporting at the time, out of the more than 800 students enrolled in collegiate run schools, only three parents actually withdrew their children in the wake of the protests. Darrell was trying to keep those parents front of mind, but he couldn't help but feel the sting of the outside criticism. He wasn't just defending a school, he was defending his own identity.
- [31:20]
Narrator
A lot of the folks who were most vocal at the time were folks of my parents generation. So that was a little bit strange for me, too, to hear and feel like, whoa, some of your greatest critics are people that you grew up with as your elders, your mentors. You're taking me to a dark time, Robbie. This is probably part of my leadership journey that I don't share often anymore.
- [31:44]
Ravi Gupta
It was a collision of values. Academic performance versus cultural continuity. Outsider urgency versus local tradition. The promise of future results versus memory of the past. Past fights along these battle lines were playing out all across New Orleans, and Carver just happened to be the most vivid and the most volatile. In some ways, Carver became a proxy for the city's larger identity crisis. For opposing camps, the stakes weren't just the lives of the city's children, though, they were that, too. The fight was about what kind of New Orleans would emerge from the floodwater it had been nearly a decade since I stepped foot in a Collegiate school, but one morning this past spring, I drove over to the Ninth Ward to see for myself how things had changed. I arrived just before the staff's morning circle, and almost immediately I could tell I was walking into something different. The first thing I passed was a trophy case inside a recent state championship basketball trophy. Photos from the last year's homecoming team, pictures, student celebrations. In prior versions of Carver, the same hallway space would have been reserved for something else. Quotes about grit, posters about college, charts tracking academic data. Now pride in culture lives right alongside pride in academics. And to be clear, they still had visuals celebrating academic achievement, too. On that recent visit, I pulled Darrell aside and asked him to chronicle for me how this all changed. We sat in his office, and he walked me through his transformation as a leader, starting with those walkouts and headlines years ago. The protests and criticism helped Jerrell realize that many of the people who had been the loudest critics of Collegiate weren't trying to tear the school down. They just had a different vision of what greatness looked like. And so he was going to collaborate with them.
- [33:40]
Narrator
Whether I agreed with their tactics, whether I agreed with their tone, whether I agreed with their conclusions, I didn't doubt that they wanted the school to be great.
- [33:49]
Ravi Gupta
In October 2014, Nola.com reported that Carver and its sister school, Tsai Academy, were moving toward a zero suspension goal. One year earlier, Ben had talked with PBS about why Tsai had decided to shift its discipline model.
- [34:04]
Ben Markovitz
We found ourselves sort of tragically stuck with nothing more than stuff like suspension, stuff that got kids out of school. We took a look at that this summer and said, that's just not what we want to do. It's not what we want to be. So what used to be a demerit is now a ton of praise in the opposite direction. So the actual path to something like suspension or expulsion is much, much longer. And that's something we thought we had in place. We thought we had a long path to those things, but really didn't.
- [34:32]
Ravi Gupta
Cy had actually reached zero suspensions before that 2014 article, and Carver was close behind. Here's Jerrell again.
- [34:40]
Narrator
I often think that discipline and conversations around discipline are. They're really lazy, right? Like, there's so much about discipline that's rooted in history and culture, and I think, most importantly, intention and identity. But on paper, we were sending a lot of kids home, or let's say a high percentage of kids who attended our school had been suspended at some point in time. That Was a matter of concern.
- [35:09]
Ravi Gupta
Jerrel remembered seeing kids standing at the bus stop midday holding suspension slips.
- [35:14]
Narrator
I'd rather have you here learning than at home, out there or out in the street.
- [35:20]
Ravi Gupta
The school began to build out a variation of restoration restorative practices. They created new systems, new training, and even physical spaces designed to help students resolve conflict without being pushed out of school. They trained staff to lead mediations and healing circles. They started to connect student discipline to other programmatic decisions. They built programs, funded the band, revived the spirit gear and leaned into rituals.
- [35:44]
Narrator
Engaging lessons helped with suspension rates. Strong sports teams help with suspension rates. Connecting before you correct help with suspension rates. A kid has to really believe I want to be a part of that community. Otherwise we lose a really powerful lever to change behavior.
- [36:02]
Ravi Gupta
Suspension rates dropped nearly threefold in a single year. This was a wildly different Carver. During my visit this spring, I also wandered into the cafeteria where the staff had gathered for their morning circle. Christine and Nikki.
- [36:21]
Victor Jones
Christine, Nicky.
- [36:26]
Ravi Gupta
On previous trips to Tsai and carver, the staff had been overwhelmingly white and young, energetic, committed, but also clearly outsiders to the community they served. This group was different. Still energetic, still mission driven, but older, more grounded, mostly black, more men. Here's Jerrel.
- [36:47]
Narrator
It is a team that is far more generationally inclined, I'll say. We have far more people who see their charge, yes, in the goals that are ambitious that we're setting right now, but also in the. I'm going to be a part of this community for years, Years and years. And people I care about are going to be a part of this community for generations. When you look at our leadership ranks, a high volume of tfa alums. But these are also folks who have been here at this school in many cases for 7, 8, 9, 10 plus years. So you have people still who were there for those trailer days, Right. Who were there for some of those crucible moments with community and outcomes and results and who can speak to that which is important.
- [37:34]
Ravi Gupta
Tomorrow, forever. More than once in our conversation, Jerrel made clear that this wasn't just about finding people in the community.
- [37:44]
Narrator
There can be a narrative that's lazy there. And as a black educator, I don't think it's a benefit to land with. Well, culture improved when there were more black folks there.
- [37:55]
Ravi Gupta
Right?
- [37:55]
Narrator
Culture improved when you had more people from the community there. Now, culture improved when we had great people who were clear on the targets and our development improved and our alignment improved and we became better at the craft of teaching and learning. And we have benefited from black excellence. And folks who are of the community who can tell a story about what we're doing and how we're growing and can speak a language that maybe we weren't always speaking before that. Now all of us speak with far more fluidity than we used to.
- [38:32]
Ravi Gupta
As the morning circle began in the cafeteria, the assistant principal kicked things off. Good morning, team. It's good to be seen. Our strong start on this week. Push touring is happening in every corner of the building. Kids are inspired to earn collectibles to their team, and we have the strongest attendance. One by one, staff members, about 100 in total, stepped forward to share announcements, shout outs and intentions for the day. Snap when you hear the teammate. Snap when you hear the action that is starting. Ms. Thompson, I've seen these morning circles on past visits, and I've always found them impressive. They require real discipline, training, consistency, and trust among colleagues. They're more than a ritual. They're a sign of strong staff culture. Culture that values communication, that starts the day with intention. Once we're in there, we can hand out collectibles, we can encourage kids, but get into more classes. Attendance. Get into classes. 90 seconds around the circle.
- [39:38]
Victor Jones
Go.
- [39:41]
Ravi Gupta
Carver had changed. The staff looked different. The building looked different. There was pride in sports and spirit and tradition. But Carver had also stayed the same that morning circle that was collegiate to the core. And as I listened, I heard the familiar reformed DNA talk of assessments, data cycles, progress monitoring. But it didn't sound cold or mechanical. It sounded focused, grounded, like a team that knew exactly what they were there to do. After the staff circle, I talked with school principal Victor Jones as he observed morning student arrival. Victor recently took over as school leader for Jerrel, who now runs the entire collegiate network.
- [40:20]
Victor Jones
It's a beautiful day. One of my favorite things about Carver's a lot of things. But it is the fact that like to work at a school where teachers who work at that school will bring their kids to learn at that school. That is rare. The fact that so many of our teammates actually bring their kids to go to school here and that I've got to teach them that they wanted me to teach their kid. How you doing, sweetie? You good? Good to see you. It's like an amazing. Like it's a. We're doing something right.
- [40:47]
Ravi Gupta
Later, I sat in on one of Victor's classes, and what I saw felt familiar. Victor was using teaching techniques I remembered from the old reform days. One in particular. No opt out. The idea that students can't simply choose not to participate. Another right is right Meaning the teacher doesn't round up or settle for a partially correct answer.
- [41:11]
Victor Jones
If you got further than the answer to give us some snaps. Cool. That is the goal. Thank you all so much. Go ahead and answer that question. 45 seconds.
- [41:19]
Ravi Gupta
Victor called on a student who didn't know the answer. And then Victor turned to another student and asked a related question, something that could help unlock it for the first student. Finally, he came back to the first student, patiently prompting, supporting, guiding, until the student arrived at the correct answer. It was the kind of moment that's easy to overlook, but it captured something essential about what Carver has become. A school shaped by the DNA of reform, structure, rigor, clarity, but deepened, adapted by time, experience, and care. Victor Jones is the principal, so one might expect him to say glowing things about the school. But what struck me most during my visit wasn't just Victor's passion. It was how consistent it was. Conversation after conversation. Custodians, coaches, teacher culture leads. Many of them from the neighborhood, many of them alumni, parents, or longtime community members. Sometimes all of the above. All of them mission driven. Take Nell Lewis, Carver's director of culture.
- [42:22]
Oscar Brown
I grew up in this community right across the tracks.
- [42:25]
Ravi Gupta
I've been working at Carver for a total of 18 years. My son graduated from Carver in 2022. He was Mr. Carver. She had lived through the transitions, seen the protests, heard the skepticism the community didn't believe. Who are these people? They coming from out of town? They're white. They don't care. And I mean, this school never had the data it's had now. Yes, we had sports championships, but the.
- [42:55]
Oscar Brown
Number of scholars that are enrolling in.
- [42:58]
Ravi Gupta
College and actually finishing is really amazing. Let me put some numbers to the academic success Nell mentioned. Last year, Carver earned an A for academic growth from the state and a B for overall academic performance. For the more wonky education stats folks, Carver ranks second in the city for open enrollment high schools, all non magnet schools for students receiving mastery or advanced performance on the state exams. The year before, they had the highest student academic growth in the city. They've been able to keep growing academically even as they continued to expand their extracurriculars. Ronald Evans Jr. Graduated in 2017. He came back to work at Carver in 2022, got his master's, and now teaches English and coaches football.
- [43:48]
Victor Jones
The enthusiasm and everything that was going on, like, I walked into a teaching meeting, it was like 50 teachers in a circle, and all of them was like, enthusiasm. What about the dorm? Like, it don't even matter what school I want to. I Want these teachers, like, I don't want these teachers. They take pride in what they have, and I think that's the really all you can ask for. Teachers like to give their all and.
- [44:08]
Oscar Brown
Have pride in what they have.
- [44:09]
Ravi Gupta
And then there's Nathaniel Roche, the network's athletic director and longtime Carver staffer.
- [44:15]
Oscar Brown
Going through the orientation that Carver was giving me, the vision that the school had for the kids and the values, choices that we choose to make daily that directly impacts the culture of the building and the culture of the kids, and also, you know, serves the community. I found myself, like, super aligned with that.
- [44:32]
Ravi Gupta
And finally, Sandra, the custodian. The teachers are marvelous. You see her. Very beautiful in and out. The principal is excellent. The whole. Actually, everybody in here is loving and kind, and they're trying their best at him talking to the kids. They're trying their best to make the kids learn. When I asked Victor, what's the difference now compared to 10 years ago, he didn't hesitate.
- [44:56]
Victor Jones
If you're gonna work harder than you ever work, and then you choose to stay with us, well, you're obviously choosing to grow in those moments. That's what they're also choosing. When people come to Carver, they tend to stay with us and they tend to grow. I remember kids could only wear all black shoes. And how much time we were spending on kids trying to correct kids for their.
- [45:15]
Ravi Gupta
I had the same policy we used to have. The black Magic marker, black tape. Yeah.
- [45:18]
Victor Jones
Yeah, we used to do all that. And that was wild to me. That was crazy to me.
- [45:22]
Ravi Gupta
Of all the people we met at Carver, the one who stood out the most was Eric French, the school's band director. He's also an alum from the pre collegiate days. After graduating, Eric returned years later to lead the very program that had once shaped him. Under his direction, the Carver Band has become one of the school's most visible sources of pride, performing across the city, drawing in students, and helping to reroute the new Carver in a t old community.
- [45:49]
Oscar Brown
It was like a dream come true to even go on this interview. When I was in the interview, man, almost broke down, you know what I'm saying? Because it was like a reality. Like, wow, I'm about to get this opportunity. And I know once I get my foot in the door, it's going to be up from here. So now I'm going into year eight here. And just how I imagined it.
- [46:13]
Ravi Gupta
A new generation of color. Carver staff, many of them alumni, have stepped into the story not just to teach, but to mentor, coach, and inspire the Building may be different, but the legacy it lives on in the hands of those who once walked these halls and now lead them. The Carver fights inspired many leaders across the city to take a different approach in their collaboration with the surrounding communities. They watched Carver's early stumbles and worked hard to avoid them. Rhonda Khalifi Alouise is the CEO of KIPP New Orleans, the city's largest charter organization. She says it took time for them to find their footing.
- [46:52]
Elizabeth Robeson
There was a much broader political context that we had not wrapped our heads and hearts around in terms of you don't know everything, you should connect with the people who actually have been here for many, many years.
- [47:05]
Ravi Gupta
That learning changed how they reopened Booker T. Washington, one of New Orleans most storied high schools. This time the new operators didn't just announce their presence. They co planned the school with its alumni association. From uniforms and colors to governance and.
- [47:20]
Elizabeth Robeson
Staffing, there wasn't a lot that we actually didn't agree on. What we learned is there's a Venn diagram and in the center is students and things like the color crimson, like it has to be the right shade and the name and things like that that preserve their legacy.
- [47:38]
Ravi Gupta
Citywide organizations like New Schools for New Orleans and even the RSD eventually began providing more support to leaders. That included an effort to more effectively matchmake between prospective charter organizations and community groups. That process has led to much more positive partnerships than what we saw at Carver in its early days. Today, the legacy high schools of New Orleans are led in many cases by people from the neighborhoods or people who've earned their place through years of service. They've embraced academic rigor and band culture, college prep and Friday night football. Carver showed the city what happens when you try to rebuild a neighborhood without its traditions. And then they showed us what's possible when you bring those traditions back and build on them rather than around them. Next time on where the Schools Went. Every teacher in the Orange was fired. You lost your house, you lost everything. You don't have a job, but it was just nothing to come back to. When you think about the loss of.
- [48:39]
Elizabeth Robeson
Health insurance that accompanied that as people.
- [48:42]
Ravi Gupta
Are literally trying to rebuild their lives, that's Next time on where the Schools Went. Where the Schools Went is an original podcast from the branch in partnership with Midas Touch. I'm your host Ravi Gupta. This show is executive produced by me, Ravi Gupta. Our senior producers are Kate Malakoff and Pallavi Katamasu. Research and fact checking by Ethan Macy Cushman and Katie Nelligan. Additional support by Liz Smith and Leah Sutherland. Post Sound and music by Chapter 4 sound design and mix by Sarah Gibalaska and sound editing by Natalie Escudero Original music by Kareem Dwight with Kevin Marin on trombone and tuba and Eric Biondo on trumpet.
- [49:34]
Elizabeth Robeson
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