Officials of the Parishwide School District of Orleans Parish and the state-operated New Orleans Recovery School District said Monday they would revise current plans to ensure that New Orleans’ hurricane-damaged schools will be rebuilt or replaced with the $2 billion in federal aid already received for the effort.
A hearing on the plan set for Thursday was postponed until September.
The districts have put together a team of experts to help revise the proposed school facilities master plan amendments, which include a $422 million third phase of the rebuilding effort with no dedicated funding.
Opponents said the proposal would require the districts to issue general obligation bonds to complete work at 19 facilities.
A coalition of business groups last week said it was “astonishing” that the school districts would spend the federal aid and then rely on local taxpayers to support bonds to complete the rebuilding.
“We are striving for a revised plan that covers every child, rather than the current plan, which covers only 83% of our projected enrollment,” said John White, superintendent of the Recovery School District.
“If there is any way to serve more of our children as we rebuild Orleans Parish public schools within the confines of available funding, guaranteeing that every child has an opportunity to attend school in a world-class facility, we’ll do our very best to make that happen,” said Darryl Kilbert, superintendent for the Orleans Parish School Board.
The school district serving Orleans Parish was split after the 2005 storms, with academically underperforming schools placed in the Recovery School District.
Orleans Parish school district debt is rated Aa3 by Moody’s Investors Service and A-plus by Standard & Poor’s.
