12 January 2026
By Safura Syed
Contributing Writer
(Veritenews.org) — During an emotional special meeting, Orleans Parish School Board members voted unanimously Thursday (Jan. 8) night to keep the district’s only traditionally run school open and accepted over $2.2 million in private donations to fund its projected operating costs.
The Leah Chase school, which opened in 2024, has thus far failed to meet its enrollment goals, resulting in a funding shortfall that was projected to triple over the next several years. The school’s financial difficulties led district officials and the board to consider closing it, a move that was backed by local business leaders and supporters of the city’s charter school-based K-12 education model.
But closure was fiercely opposed by many Leah Chase parents. Several members of Leah Chase’s family also urged the board to keep the school open as is, saying they would reconsider giving the district their permission to use the late chef’s name if the board voted to close the school or hand it over to a charter school operator.
The board was expected to vote on the school’s future last month, when district Superintendent Fateama Fulmore presented the board with the option to close the school or to continue running it. Despite community outcry, the board deferred their decision to this week, saying that they needed more time to fundraise and gather community support. The Thursday vote to continue operating the school came just two weeks before the school district’s annual open enrollment period ends.
The Leah Chase School is the only school in the district that is directly run by its central office. All other schools in the parish are operated by semi-autonomous charter boards, a legacy of the post-Katrina overhaul of the city’s public education system. For community members and parents who spoke during public comment both last night and last month, that distinction is important.
Civil rights pioneers Leona Tate and Gail Etienne, two of the four Black students who desegregated New Orleans public schools 65 years ago, have spoken in favor of keeping the school open. They said closing the school would dishonor Leah Chase’s legacy – the iconic New Orleans chef and civil rights leader the school is named after.
“I stand before you now because the promise we fought for – equal access to high quality public education with dignity – is on the line again,” Tate said during public comment at last Thursday’s meeting. “I did not walk into a hostile school house as a child so that decades later we would close a public school that is finally doing right by families.”
But for some board members, the question about whether to keep the school open is strictly a financial one. Because school funding is directly tied to enrollment, underenrollment at the school has hurt its finances. The school began this school year with a $500,000 deficit, which district officials projected would grow to $1.5 million over the next two years.
The school currently has 332 students and would need its enrollment to double in order for its finances to break even, according to district projections. District leaders have pointed towards low birth rates, population loss, and uncertainties in city and federal funding as financial risks that threaten the long-term future of the school. And in New Orleans, 26 percent of students attended private schools in 2022, further drawing funding away from public schools.
The board has deliberated for months on how to attract more families to the school, whether it be through specialized programming or increased advertising. Even as they voted to keep the school open, board members, including Olin Parker and Katherine Baudouin, expressed concern about enrollment.
“Unless we increase the enrollment of the school, we will be in this exact same place in November and December of 2027,” Parker said Thursday, “because we won’t have enough money to run the school.”
But board member Gabriela Biro, a Leah Chase supporter, said she is confident that the school won’t be in the same position two years from now.
The Leah Chase School is a non-selective school, and parents highlighted how it is serving many students who face housing instability or have disabilities. Charter schools in the city have been criticized for turning away special education students or failing to provide them with legally required services, leading to a decade of federal oversight over the district.
“It’s not just about whether we keep the Leah Chase school going, it’s whether we’re serious about educating all of our students and all of our community,” said Edgar “Dook” Chase IV, Leah Chase’s grandson. “That’s the question that’s on the agenda tonight.”
The Edgar “Dooky” Jr. and Leah Chase Family Foundation donated over $200,000 to the school’s sustaining fund on Thursday, which the board voted to create last month to make accepting private donations for the school easier. In December, members of the Chase family said they didn’t want to take the responsibility of funding the school away from the district but would still support the school.
The board also accepted a $2 million donation from Karen Oser Edmunds, a grandmother of a student at the school. Both donations – from Edmunds and from the Chase family – came with the stipulation that the school remain open for another two years. Last month, some board members refused to accept a donation of $1.5 million from Edmunds because of those restrictions.
At the beginning of the meeting, board member Olin Parker proposed that the school board add further stipulations, including that the board would only continue to operate the school if its enrollment is over 338 students by January 2027, its deficit didn’t exceed funds set aside for the school or if it wasn’t in the bottom 10 in academic performance scores and growth in the city. These stipulations were later removed. The only restriction for keeping the school open for another two years requires that there be $865,000 in the fund that the district set aside for it by Jan.15 – a requirement that should be more than filled by the donations the school board accepted at Thursday night’s meeting.
After the meeting, Edgar Chase said that the community support proves how important quality education is to the city.
“We’ll make sure that everyone knows that the education system here in New Orleans is healthy,” Chase said. “I hope you pick the Leah Chase school because we got a lot of great things that’s coming along.”
This article originally published in the January 12, 2026 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.