The Lens

The Louisiana Department of Education and Orleans Parish School Board have asked a federal judge to release them from a decade-old judgment, instituted on behalf of special-education students who weren’t receiving services from charter schools in the early days of New Orleans’ decentralized school district. In February, in a request filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, school officials argue that they have met the requirements laid out in the 2015 settlement and have continued to “implement robust approaches to monitoring, accountability and support of schools and their students.” Lawyers for the Southern Poverty Law Center – who represent the kids who don’t receive special-ed services – are pushing back, asking judges to maintain the consent judgment.  “For families in New Orleans public schools, the system remains woefully unable to address the needs of students with disabilities,” SPLC wrote in a reply filed with the court last week, on March 25. The lawyers’ concerns are backed up by a broad audit on special-ed monitoring by the state of Louisiana. The state failed to monitor 43 of 100 school systems to ensure students with disabilities received legally protected services, auditors determined.