Operation Black Phoenix
Operation Black Phoenix
Secret fight to keep education alive in Black New Orleans
On January 17, the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin High School re-opened in the East Bank, Ninth Ward Black section of New Orleans that it target for complete abandonment by the Bush Administration.
Against the political will of the Oval Office and oil lobby to keep Benjamin High School closed, the people of New Orleans fought to reopen the high school as a beacon of hope to the 65,000 New Orleans students displaced from their homes and schools.
Benjamin Franklin High School was one of 117-city schools closed. And the only East Bank public school to date to reopened. The story of Benjamin Franklin High School struggle to reopen is a much need success story and lesson in effective Black political struggle.
Against forces that would defeat most modern armies, the high school community and its Internet-based international networks have resisted and defended the educational right of the East Bank sections of New Orleans and Black youth around the country to an advanced education in a public school setting.
Critical need to reopen all New Orleans schools
According to Dr.Jones, who wrote a book about children in conflict, “Then They Started Shooting: Growing Up in Wartime Bosnia,” emphasized the resilience of most children. —People will recover fairly quickly from such a disaster, she said, if families are not divided, if basic needs are met and if appropriate mourning – for people, pets or possessions- can take place.
But isolation from social networks can lead to depression; so meeting the communities’ needs helps individuals recover.
“The first thing you can do to rebuild your community is to reopen your schools”, Dr. Conner said.” I rode by midmorning and saw children playing at recess. I get choked up just thinking about it. They had a safe place to play and some happy times”
The Oval Office and the US Department of Education refused to lead an aggressive Bosnia styled national campaign to try and reopen as many public schools in the New Orleans region as possible to give the people a physical sign of hope and a safe place for the children to start their emotional recovery from the trauma of Katrina.
The Oval Office takes over New Orleans schools
The Oval Office has forced the closing of all 117 schools in New Orleans. This was done in part to send a clear and ruthless message to Black New Orleanains to leave the city of New Orleans. Many inner city families were forced to move just in order to keep their children in school.
Formerly Black public schools are now reopened as white controlled -chartered schools funded by the federal government in only the white sections of the city.
The forced closing of the mostly Black public schools was a critical aspect of the Oval Office forced depopulation over 425,000 mostly Black citizens from the city.
As of this writing less than 5,000 of the almost 70,000 pre-Katrina students are attending school in what is left of the city of New Orleans. Another 35,000 children under the age of five will never attend school in New Orleans, because of the Oval office depopulation policy.
By forcing the depopulation of the city and closing of the schools, the state of Louisiana and the federal government could quietly shift the massive costs of supporting the 400,000 internal displaced flood victims on to the welfare and medical systems of other cities, states and more importantly avoid the expense of reporting a wide public school system.
The pre-Katrina cost of education in the New Orleans metropolitan region was over one billion dollars per year. If most the schools were reopened this cost should have been be shared by the state and federal until the region recovered. The economic ripple effect of restarting the public school would potentially jump-start the New Orleans industrial economy.
The pre-Katrina cost of education in the city of New Orleans alone was over 500 million dollars per year.
Rebuilding a core group of flooded schools would cost over 300 million dollars.
Over a ten-year period, educational recovery costs in the city of New Orleans would have run over 7 billion dollars for a modern advanced computer-centric educational system. Under the federal depopulation plan these cost will be reduced to less than a billion dollars, by forcing other school systems to pick up the cost.
The armed depopulation of the region was the cheaper Oval Office solution and met a series of other Republican strategic goals for southern Louisiana. One of these goals was taking political control of the city and region. Depopulation would also pre-position the Republicans to win control of the state government.
Depopulation policy
The Republican Party ruthless depopulation policy goes against all international recovery practice. What make the emotional recovery of a white child in Bosnia different than a Black or white child in New Orleans?
Nothing.
In fact according to the Louisiana Vision 2020, education is the single most critical survival tool in the transition to a post-industrial society in the New Orleans industrial economy.
Beyond saving the billions of dollars in not rebuilding the educational infrastructure of New Orleans, it appears the Republican Party is over focused on depopulating the political based of Ninth Ward in order to break the Democratic Party political control of the city.
Epicenter of Black New Orleans
At the center of the Ninth Ward was the national ranked public school name Benjamin Franklin High School and it advanced computer-based urban curriculum.
Franklin high and other useable schools in the East Bank section of New Orleans had thousand of dual use class rooms that could have been used as trauma centers to house thousands of people and families and communities together in the city.
These potential trauma/educational centers were purposely ordered by the Oval Office and left to rot, while the inner city population was forced at gunpoint to evacuate to the triage centers 18 miles away at New Orleans international airport, for forced shipment and relocation to Houston, TX and other cities.
The school was informed after the flooding of the city, by the federal, state and city governments that it would remain closed until the next school year in the fall of 2006!
The political problem Franklin high school faced was that the whole Ninth ward was ordered military quarantined by the Oval and plans were being designed to turn the whole community into a back full toxic waste dump alligator lake and public park after total depopulation.
Many of the thousand-undiscovered bodies and missing victims were hidden under in the floodwaters of the Ninth ward and East bank areas of New Orleans. The Oval office did not want these bodies counted or recovered. This political reality was a major political challenge to getting support for reopening Benjamin Franklin High School.
Parts of the University community where many Franklin students and faulty lived was in the Ninth Ward was part of the Oval office kill zone. The ward became the Oval Office primary urban depopulation zone.
The Oval Office educational policy ensures long-term suffering and trauma for many New Orleans students.
Congress appropriated 62 billion dollars for Katrina
Benjamin Franklin High School, integrated, nationally known and the highest-ranked secondary school in the state of Louisiana is located on the southern most tip of the University of New Orleans, lake front campus on Lake Pontchartrian.
Franklin high was blessed to have been flooded by only two feet of water and 3 million dollars of damages.
Congress appropriated 62 billion dollars for Katrina; the Oval Office could not find 3 million to reopen Franklin. The cost to get Franklin up and going as a computer ready community trauma center and then a 1,000 student high school was less than one hour of the cost of the federal troops depopulating the city.
In the aftermath of Katrina, the school was ordered closed and kept closed by the Oval Office and state of Louisiana until the fall of 2006 to enforced the depopulation of the city’s Ninth Ward and East bank sections, which were home to the Black Democratic base of the city.
Keeping Franklin high closed was a critical element in the Oval Office’s depopulation of the ghettos of New Orleans and its long-term reform of the New Orleans school policy.
Franklin is the most powerful public school in the Black community of southern Louisiana; its forced closure had political importance beyond its size and educational mission. Franklin high national known and respected curriculum promoted multi-disciplinary, holistic interaction of traditional subject matters (i.e. math, science and language arts.
The existing New Orleans schools, like most US high schools tended to follow a discipline-specific curriculum, which student learning to multiply and divide only in math class, reading in English classes, and studying about organism only in science class. The Benjainm Franklin high model curriculum emphasized innovation, creativity, and problem-solving skills, through the use of wed-based education. The Franklin model stressed starting college courses and project learning internships in high school.
The model also necessitated an expensive major system wide investment and migration to computer-based informational educational platforms. The Franklin model raises the skill level of both teachers and students particularly in math, science and computer application and requires smaller class sizes. The fact the Franklin High was 35 perecent African America and 45 perecent non-white removed race as a issue to reject the advanced science and math curriculum as the core element for all New Orleans.
The physical existence of Franklin high school and a web-based powerful curriculum posed a direct threat to the Oval Office and US Department of Education plans to use cheap traditional white controlled Charter schools as the new change agent to remake and shape the curriculum and mission of inner city schools in the downsized New Orleans Parish.
Forcing Franklin High school to remain closed until the next year in the fall of 2006 was the Oval Office plan to destroy the school faulty.
This Oval Office policy was tantamount to murder for Franklin High, because most of the international respected faculty and staff would be forced by personal economics reasons to leave the school and the region forever. This would destroy the human infrastructure of Franklin High faculty developed over almost 60 years and the key to its powerful curriculum. Also, with Franklin off line for a full school year, all effective local resistance to the US Department of Education plan to gut the Franklin powerful science and math-based curriculum would be gone.
On the other hand, an operational Franklin High could potentially lead to the implementation of a city wide web-based Franklin modeled educational curriculum for all the schools coming back online. For sure Franklin school would openly fight for the existence of serious education in the East bank Black section of New Orleans targeted for complete abandonment by the Oval office.
Initially shock of the Oval Office triage plan
Franklin high school leaders were initially shock that the Oval Office was leaving it to die. Given it strategic importance to the public schools reform movement in New Orleans and the President’s no student left behind national policy the Franklin leadership could not believe at first it was on the Oval Office kill list.
After the failure of the President to send aid the stranded, suffering, dying Black people for a week and the federal military cordon sanitaire and ruthless forced depopulation of Ninth Ward and East Bank of sections of New Orleans by the NORTHCOM forces, most illusions the Franklin high leadership were replaced with the cold reality of the Oval Office real educational abandonment policy for the East Bank section of New Orleans.
Franklin School steps to Bush
The high school leadership soon realized the political imperative of reopening Franklin in order to fight the nightmare of the Oval Office depopulation policy and take a leadership role in the healing process for the Ninth ward.
While the Oval Office and nation were getting ready to honoring Rosa Parks, the resistance movement to save Franklin high was gaining force and freedom fighters started to engage the NORTHCOM forces in the secret battle to rescue Franklin high from the US Department of Education and Homeland Security destruction.
The high school students and faulty, the Franklin community, the University of New Orleans and the Black community have to date successfully fought to regain political control of Franklin High School that will reopen in January. Franklin high victory would set the political stage and ease the way for other inner city schools to be politically forced to reopened as trauma centers and then later as operational schools before the faculties moved away.
Its appears the Oval Office, US Departments of Education, Homeland Security and Defense never read a book on the importance of schools in the recovery process.
Nor did they appear to really care!
While misinformation statements like “I would call the scope of this disaster (Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans), the scale of the mental heath problems, unprecedented,” were being made by Charles G. Curie, the mental heath administrator of the federal Department Heath and Human Services. Inner city potential trauma centers were being left to rot and families bonds destroyed.
The political cost to the Oval Office of finding thousands of die bodies in the Ninth ward appears to have far out weighted any mental heath or education issues.
Next level of instruction
Carol Christen, principle of Benjamin Franklin High School said, “ My concern was providing the next level of instruction, getting out seniors graduated and proving an opportunity for people to return to New Orleans.” Christen said. “I knew that if we didn’t open, that a good percentage of these students would not be back.”
Carol Christen was knowingly opposing the will of the oil lobby and the President of the United State of American.
Why did the Oval Office fear of Franklin High School so much?
Web-based education was about to take root in New Orleans public schools and it was critical that Franklin high infrastructure, both human and physical survive to ensure the content would be just like Franklin and not some watered down cheap federal copy to meet state standards. (See Nubian News “Why the US Department of Education fears Benjamin Franklin High School”)
This is the real fight for the hearts and minds of the youth of New Orleans.
Principle Christen, like other New Orleanains was ready willing and able to get in harms way to save her school and the East Bank community from needless political destruction.
Their goal: Re-open on Jan 17, the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin
According to the Times-Picayune—Beyond the fierce loyalty that most high schools inspire in their students, the effort to get Franklin open and get the students back in school has been driven in part by it rigorous academic program. As the top-rated high school in the state of Louisiana, Franklin has strict admission standards and an ethnically diverse student body, and last year had the second highest number of National Merit finalists in the nation.
On a much deeper educational activism level, Franklin administration, faulty and students had been the leading educational change agents within the New Orleans Parish School system. The ‘next level of instruction’ for Franklin faulty and the U of ON staff was positioning the high school and the University of New Orleans as dual use small business incubators and business platforms.
Once the school for rich white children and New Orleans elite, now Benjamin Franklin High, a.k.a. Franklin Carter School is the defender of African American intellectual excellence and the brightest hope for the return of many of the 60,000 displaced Black students of New Orleans and the 100,000 displaced students of the metropolitan region.
Benjamin Franklin high school after losing it library, cafeteria, computers, sports equipment and the recently repaired gymnasium floor to flooding, mud and mold, raise again from the hit list of US Department of Education, like a Black Phoenix. Franklin high has emerged as a beacon of hope.
The Franklin story is about the ruthlessness evil of the Oval Office treatment of the children of New Orleans and the struggle of the people’s collective resistance.
Benjamin Franklin High School community has fought back Katrina, Rita, the oil lobby, the Oval office, the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans attempts to closed the High School doors and attempts to kill the dreams and strong spirit that Benjamin Franklin High community stands for.
Against forces that would defeat most modern armies, the high school community and its Internet-based international networks have resisted and defended the educational right of the East Bank sections of New Orleans and Black youth around the country to an advanced education in a public school setting.
Underground Railroad networks
There are no public reports on how the Franklin high community was able on a daily basis to get their secret volunteer army of hundreds of freedom fighters, workers and supplies passed the armed federal trooper forces in the Ninth Ward for over the first six critical weeks, but they some how get it done. Only selective pieces of the covert operation have so far made their way to the surface so far.
Franklin networks and cells penetrate many levels of the government, military and the local oil industry. It is clear that the Franklin community networks extended into the National Guard and other friendly force intelligence, command and control structures. Only with the help of these friendly forces could the Franklin underground forces ever hope to avoid detection by the storm troopers and spooks of US Space Command and NORTHCORP patrolling the Ninth ward and University of New Orleans Lake front campus. The primary mission of the federal forces was keeping people away from their homes and businesses.
Military satellites over looked Franklin
A key challenge for Franklin high School was the US Space Command deployment of
the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) satellite network, which allowed US Space Command to view in real time video feed, the entire region of southern Louisiana. This federal military deployment would also prove to be a major weakness because the NORTHCOM army would never integrated their informational network with the National Guard ground forces for a total intelligence picture. US Space Commands could see and track where the floodwaters were and the rate they were spreading. Larger objects like adult alligators were trackable. These same satellites hunt and kill Mimi North Koran submarines in the Sea of Japan and follow moving objects underwater thousands of miles.
GMTI create surveillance management grids were reportedly designed for the local landing zones to rapidly move thousands of citizens out of the spreading floor water. The landing zones ended up being used to forcefully depopulating the city. One of these zones was over the 17th Street levee. The University of New Orleans Lake front campus was a forward basing center operation for ground forces within the 17th Street GMITI grid. US Space Command had thermal sensitive satellite sensors that was also were up linked to night helicopter thermal sensors watching targets of interest 24/7. Thousands of ground forces were deployed to the Ninth Ward. Check points were constructed and manned by armed troops.
More importantly, the GMITI allowed US Space Commanders the ability to locate track and adjust deployment of all the rescue assets, i.e. boats, trucks and helicopters. The location of all alligator farms and wild life parks were girded and monitored. The Franklin high school supplies vans and trucks should have been easily picked up. All this critical information was fed to President Bush situation room in Texas and Washington, DC. Some how the reconstruction of Franklin High was missed or over looked for six weeks.
The Franklin intelligence and freedom fighters units understood the nature of Oval threat and the best counter measurer to meet the threat was superior human intelligence and support of the New Orleans people, many of whom were military operatives. The Franklin freedom fighters most powerful wespone was the moral support of the city of New Orleans people to keep Franklin alive.
Many of the troops, particularly the National Guard, knew the real mission of the federal forces was to depopulate the city for the oil companies.
Long before the country comes to understand the ruthless of the federal depopulation policy toward New Orleans, many people from New Orleans were activity resisting the depopulation policy. They organized an Underground Railroad networking using the Internet, email, cell phones and word of mouth. This people’s resistance network was able to physically and politically reconstruct Benjainm Franklin High School to the point of being approved as a chartered school. Franklin can now service as a forward base operation to free other school from the Oval Office kill list.
The story of the survival of Benjamin Franklin High School is the story of the will of the Black people of New Orleans to protect their children future.
Benjamin Franklin High School represents the unnecessary dead and destruction of schools and students Franklin finally represents the hopeful birth of advanced web-based education and real hope for schools in southern Louisiana.
Franklin looked Katrina in the eye of the storm
One can feel the physical presence of Lake Pontchartrian from the Lake front campus of Benjamin Franklin High School it is so close. The University of New Orleans and Benjamin Franklin School share an elevated island on the rim of the northern tip of the city. The city elevations drop over 30 feet from Franklin High into the deepest valley in the city in the lower Ninth ward. Floodwater flow the same path of destruction to the bottom elevations of the city.
August 26, 2005 last was the last day of school the high and campus was secured for Katrina. The school best protection was its location and elevation. While the rupture of the 17th levee was near by the schools higher elevation forced most of the floodwater to drain away from the school. This limited the damage to the first floor.
The school of 958 student’s year has just started in a record hot wave. The jet stream in the Gulf waters 84 degree. There were 100 degree hotspots over both Rio Grand and Mississippi Rivers. There were back to back to back near 100 degree days. The Florida Keys appeared to be firing kill storms at Gulf cities every other week. This was already the worse hurricane season on record.
As Katrina was just recharging in the central Gulf region, yet to lock in its final course toward the New Orleans basin the faculty and students of Franklin High secured the school communication grid and the critical wed-education data as best they could, transferring mission critical school files to be stored at the university NASA water proof dada center and prepared to take a direct hit from Katrina.
Over the years, the high school has withstood tens of passing hurricanes but nothing like Katrina. Franklin high new home at the University of New Orleans offered the school a unique higher physical elevation and modern drain infrastructure to better resist and recovery flooding than most of the lower elevations wooden structures in the Ninth ward, the culture Harlem of Black New Orleans.
Oval Office urban kill zone
The school first floor was destroyed, but the rest of the school has little damage relative to the rest of the Ninth Ward ghetto was in some places inundated under 30 feet of floodwaters.
The second and third floor critcal classrooms of the high school were unscathed and frozen in time on August 26, 2006.
Homeland Security and the NORTHCOM federal troops refused to use the school as a trauma center or field hospital center to help the community stay together. The Oval plan was to use the flooding as a pretext to depopulation the Ninth ward. Dry land was only a few miles West Side of the 17th Street levees within the city that never flooded.
The Oval Office and oil lobby master plan was to downsized and depopulated the New Orleans industrial base. Reopening Franklin high would politically send the wrong message to the people of New Orleans and allow the wrong people in the political charged area before of the issue of the bodies could be addressed. Also saving anything in the East bank area ran counter to the goal and objects of the depopulation policy.
Education on the cheap
This federalization on the “cheap” of the New Orleans school system is designed around the Visio 2020 master plan and saving 90 percent of 560 million dollars New Orleans pre-Katrina educational budget. A operational Franklin High would exposed the myth of the charter school plan biggest weakness of poorly trained human infrastructure, i.e. lack of experienced computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) centric teachers, lack of existing CIM culture and physical equipment and communication networks.
Cost containment
The state of Louisiana problem is like both the city of New Orleans and the federal government; it too is financial bankrupt and lacks the money to bring up grade the public schools in New Orleans to Franklin High standards. The state control schools at 50 percent of the pre Katrina student population or of 35,000 would means operating 50 schools at cost of 280 million dollars.
Educational requirement of digitialized manufacturing
Virtual reality digitalized manufacturing necessitate workers able to function in a totally Internet-based computer integrated design and manufacturing environment. Informational-based educational models emphasizing mathematics, science and critical thinking would have to replace the assembly line orientation of today’s public school education. Benjainm Franklin has the core digitialized design and manufacturing curriculum and faulty and network relations already developed and operational. The real truth is that there is a deadly slave triangular backdoor sub-assembly trade growing between China, Canada and Mexico in components and sub-assemble and final assembles those ends up in America as cheap imports. Millions of the American entry-level jobs are lost to this backdoor trade. The trade is creating new seroius pressure on American high school to migration their computer integrated manufacturing curriculums to digital design and manufacturing curriculum. Most public schools could not afford the expensive IT upgrades necessary to teach digital design and informational systems. Franklin High School is one of a hand full of public school that can.
Reestablishment of educational Apartheid
Franklin High and other elements in the Black community knew that over 20 charter schools are planned in the initial phase of implementation the so-called Philadelphia educational network model to replace the existing New Orleans school system was a poorly planned political ruse. Many of the initial charter schools, i.e. Ben Franklin Elementary, Ben Franklin High, Lusher Elementary and High school, Audubon Montessori and Edna Karr School, were former Magnet schools and have advanced computer science infrastructure, that they painstakingly accumulated over the years as Magnets before Katrina.
These former magnet schools already have state-of-the-art campuses and access to university academic resources. With a year of operation and students who already benefited from Katrina, these schools get would another leg up their poorer inner city counterparts. Most of the other schools coming back online would be Black and poor. Many of their student students are destitute, mental at risk and hundred of miles away from New Orleans. The former Magnet as the lead charter schools is de facto reestablishment of educational apartheid in the New Orleans Parish.
Weakness of the freestanding charter school
The Franklin community knew the charter school model was developed as proto type of the Vision 2020 myth of centralized control of the New Orleans public schools. Most charter schools will be free standing schools. Most new teachers are being imported into the charter school system are not strong in basic computer application literacy.
This school model lacks the advanced educational infrastructure (i.e. IT application teachers and IT equipment) to deal with B. Franklin High and other charter school university/multinational collaborative partnerships.
Most second wave free standing charters schools and district schools would seriously lack the organic relationship and integration Benjamin Franklin High School has with the computer science and IT departments at the University of New Orleans, that allow it high school students to incubate the latest informational technologies.
The seamless integration of Franklin High School curriculum critical to the development of higher educational levels would not reachable for years.
More importantly, the Franklin community knew that free standing charter schools would be political programmed failures to cover the real agenda of the Vision 2020 which is state controlled city schools. The state of Louisiana has taken direct legal control of 102 of the 117 schools in New Orleans. Charter schools were being used by the federal and state government to consolidated all New Orleans Parish administration and boards under unified and centralized fiscal structures.
The federally funded-chartered schools are the front end of the process of centralization of the New Orleans school system. Lacking the funding to retool and train web-based educators and staff, the consolidation was driven by a fiscal, not educational agenda. The real fiscal fight would be in terms of the content of the post-Katrina reform curruluims being designed and written by the State Department of Education that will be introduced into the New Orleans schools coming back online in the fall of 2006.
Power of Internet
Using the Franklin High school’s e-mail group database, a core of group of parents, teachers, students and friends of the high school and university was recruited and tasks out with various duties and projects. Somewhere out of state college students
Given the state of ground communications and lack of surface roads, it was a logistical nightmare to procure and transport all the things Benjainm Franklin High School would need to start it massive clean-up and rewiring of the communication grid. A secret Franklin-based people’s Redball express transportation Corp was in operation around the clock in the ghetto.
For over four months, the Franklin army labored 24 hours a day, 7-day weeks the first almost two months in secret in order to raise the high school back to operational levels.
According to physics teacher, who is also the head football coach and US Marine Corp Reserve captain, it was crucial that volunteers “stay below the radar,” captain Firneno said, “We didn’t want to create a situation where they (school officials) were going to come and tell us we couldn’t be there. We felt it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission”
Parents came in chainsaws and within one day cleared the entire tree from the courtyard. Other parent brought generator, cleaning supplies, garden sprayers, wet-dry vacuums and surgical masks. The school was cleared and sanitized.
Charter proposal taskforce
Meanwhile, Christen, other faculty members and leaders from the University of New Orleans worked on putting the charter proposal together. As a charter school, Franklin would still be subject to state laws and accountability standards but would be able to open up independently, obtain money allocated for charter schools, maintain its admission standards and, because of its partnership with UNO, have access to college-level resources.
On October 28, 2005, the Orleans Parish School Board approved Franklin’s charter application along with applications from 19 other schools. Also 60 day after the 17th Street levee flooded 80 percent of the city and most Black public schools.
The school’s parents association has started to collect money for faculty salaries and instructional materials have risked 90,000 dollars.
Academics will remain the school’s cornerstone, but tending to the emotional needs of students also will be a priority.
But Christen knows that being able to call themselves Benjamin Franklin High School student again will be an important part of their recovery. As stated above—“ People will recover fairly quickly from such a disaster, she, if families are not divided, if basic needs are met and if appropriate mourning – for people, pets or possessions- can take place.
But isolation from social networks can lead to depression; so meeting the community’s needs helps individuals recover.
“The first thing you can do to rebuild your community is to reopen your schools”
Franklin high school reopened at time and stand as bacon of hope and an otherwise hopeless situation.
Secret fight to keep education alive in Black New Orleans
On January 17, the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin High School re-opened in the East Bank, Ninth Ward Black section of New Orleans that it target for complete abandonment by the Bush Administration.
Against the political will of the Oval Office and oil lobby to keep Benjamin High School closed, the people of New Orleans fought to reopen the high school as a beacon of hope to the 65,000 New Orleans students displaced from their homes and schools.
Benjamin Franklin High School was one of 117-city schools closed. And the only East Bank public school to date to reopened. The story of Benjamin Franklin High School struggle to reopen is a much need success story and lesson in effective Black political struggle.
Against forces that would defeat most modern armies, the high school community and its Internet-based international networks have resisted and defended the educational right of the East Bank sections of New Orleans and Black youth around the country to an advanced education in a public school setting.
Critical need to reopen all New Orleans schools
According to Dr.Jones, who wrote a book about children in conflict, “Then They Started Shooting: Growing Up in Wartime Bosnia,” emphasized the resilience of most children. —People will recover fairly quickly from such a disaster, she said, if families are not divided, if basic needs are met and if appropriate mourning – for people, pets or possessions- can take place.
But isolation from social networks can lead to depression; so meeting the communities’ needs helps individuals recover.
“The first thing you can do to rebuild your community is to reopen your schools”, Dr. Conner said.” I rode by midmorning and saw children playing at recess. I get choked up just thinking about it. They had a safe place to play and some happy times”
The Oval Office and the US Department of Education refused to lead an aggressive Bosnia styled national campaign to try and reopen as many public schools in the New Orleans region as possible to give the people a physical sign of hope and a safe place for the children to start their emotional recovery from the trauma of Katrina.
The Oval Office takes over New Orleans schools
The Oval Office has forced the closing of all 117 schools in New Orleans. This was done in part to send a clear and ruthless message to Black New Orleanains to leave the city of New Orleans. Many inner city families were forced to move just in order to keep their children in school.
Formerly Black public schools are now reopened as white controlled -chartered schools funded by the federal government in only the white sections of the city.
The forced closing of the mostly Black public schools was a critical aspect of the Oval Office forced depopulation over 425,000 mostly Black citizens from the city.
As of this writing less than 5,000 of the almost 70,000 pre-Katrina students are attending school in what is left of the city of New Orleans. Another 35,000 children under the age of five will never attend school in New Orleans, because of the Oval office depopulation policy.
By forcing the depopulation of the city and closing of the schools, the state of Louisiana and the federal government could quietly shift the massive costs of supporting the 400,000 internal displaced flood victims on to the welfare and medical systems of other cities, states and more importantly avoid the expense of reporting a wide public school system.
The pre-Katrina cost of education in the New Orleans metropolitan region was over one billion dollars per year. If most the schools were reopened this cost should have been be shared by the state and federal until the region recovered. The economic ripple effect of restarting the public school would potentially jump-start the New Orleans industrial economy.
The pre-Katrina cost of education in the city of New Orleans alone was over 500 million dollars per year.
Rebuilding a core group of flooded schools would cost over 300 million dollars.
Over a ten-year period, educational recovery costs in the city of New Orleans would have run over 7 billion dollars for a modern advanced computer-centric educational system. Under the federal depopulation plan these cost will be reduced to less than a billion dollars, by forcing other school systems to pick up the cost.
The armed depopulation of the region was the cheaper Oval Office solution and met a series of other Republican strategic goals for southern Louisiana. One of these goals was taking political control of the city and region. Depopulation would also pre-position the Republicans to win control of the state government.
Depopulation policy
The Republican Party ruthless depopulation policy goes against all international recovery practice. What make the emotional recovery of a white child in Bosnia different than a Black or white child in New Orleans?
Nothing.
In fact according to the Louisiana Vision 2020, education is the single most critical survival tool in the transition to a post-industrial society in the New Orleans industrial economy.
Beyond saving the billions of dollars in not rebuilding the educational infrastructure of New Orleans, it appears the Republican Party is over focused on depopulating the political based of Ninth Ward in order to break the Democratic Party political control of the city.
Epicenter of Black New Orleans
At the center of the Ninth Ward was the national ranked public school name Benjamin Franklin High School and it advanced computer-based urban curriculum.
Franklin high and other useable schools in the East Bank section of New Orleans had thousand of dual use class rooms that could have been used as trauma centers to house thousands of people and families and communities together in the city.
These potential trauma/educational centers were purposely ordered by the Oval Office and left to rot, while the inner city population was forced at gunpoint to evacuate to the triage centers 18 miles away at New Orleans international airport, for forced shipment and relocation to Houston, TX and other cities.
The school was informed after the flooding of the city, by the federal, state and city governments that it would remain closed until the next school year in the fall of 2006!
The political problem Franklin high school faced was that the whole Ninth ward was ordered military quarantined by the Oval and plans were being designed to turn the whole community into a back full toxic waste dump alligator lake and public park after total depopulation.
Many of the thousand-undiscovered bodies and missing victims were hidden under in the floodwaters of the Ninth ward and East bank areas of New Orleans. The Oval office did not want these bodies counted or recovered. This political reality was a major political challenge to getting support for reopening Benjamin Franklin High School.
Parts of the University community where many Franklin students and faulty lived was in the Ninth Ward was part of the Oval office kill zone. The ward became the Oval Office primary urban depopulation zone.
The Oval Office educational policy ensures long-term suffering and trauma for many New Orleans students.
Congress appropriated 62 billion dollars for Katrina
Benjamin Franklin High School, integrated, nationally known and the highest-ranked secondary school in the state of Louisiana is located on the southern most tip of the University of New Orleans, lake front campus on Lake Pontchartrian.
Franklin high was blessed to have been flooded by only two feet of water and 3 million dollars of damages.
Congress appropriated 62 billion dollars for Katrina; the Oval Office could not find 3 million to reopen Franklin. The cost to get Franklin up and going as a computer ready community trauma center and then a 1,000 student high school was less than one hour of the cost of the federal troops depopulating the city.
In the aftermath of Katrina, the school was ordered closed and kept closed by the Oval Office and state of Louisiana until the fall of 2006 to enforced the depopulation of the city’s Ninth Ward and East bank sections, which were home to the Black Democratic base of the city.
Keeping Franklin high closed was a critical element in the Oval Office’s depopulation of the ghettos of New Orleans and its long-term reform of the New Orleans school policy.
Franklin is the most powerful public school in the Black community of southern Louisiana; its forced closure had political importance beyond its size and educational mission. Franklin high national known and respected curriculum promoted multi-disciplinary, holistic interaction of traditional subject matters (i.e. math, science and language arts.
The existing New Orleans schools, like most US high schools tended to follow a discipline-specific curriculum, which student learning to multiply and divide only in math class, reading in English classes, and studying about organism only in science class. The Benjainm Franklin high model curriculum emphasized innovation, creativity, and problem-solving skills, through the use of wed-based education. The Franklin model stressed starting college courses and project learning internships in high school.
The model also necessitated an expensive major system wide investment and migration to computer-based informational educational platforms. The Franklin model raises the skill level of both teachers and students particularly in math, science and computer application and requires smaller class sizes. The fact the Franklin High was 35 perecent African America and 45 perecent non-white removed race as a issue to reject the advanced science and math curriculum as the core element for all New Orleans.
The physical existence of Franklin high school and a web-based powerful curriculum posed a direct threat to the Oval Office and US Department of Education plans to use cheap traditional white controlled Charter schools as the new change agent to remake and shape the curriculum and mission of inner city schools in the downsized New Orleans Parish.
Forcing Franklin High school to remain closed until the next year in the fall of 2006 was the Oval Office plan to destroy the school faulty.
This Oval Office policy was tantamount to murder for Franklin High, because most of the international respected faculty and staff would be forced by personal economics reasons to leave the school and the region forever. This would destroy the human infrastructure of Franklin High faculty developed over almost 60 years and the key to its powerful curriculum. Also, with Franklin off line for a full school year, all effective local resistance to the US Department of Education plan to gut the Franklin powerful science and math-based curriculum would be gone.
On the other hand, an operational Franklin High could potentially lead to the implementation of a city wide web-based Franklin modeled educational curriculum for all the schools coming back online. For sure Franklin school would openly fight for the existence of serious education in the East bank Black section of New Orleans targeted for complete abandonment by the Oval office.
Initially shock of the Oval Office triage plan
Franklin high school leaders were initially shock that the Oval Office was leaving it to die. Given it strategic importance to the public schools reform movement in New Orleans and the President’s no student left behind national policy the Franklin leadership could not believe at first it was on the Oval Office kill list.
After the failure of the President to send aid the stranded, suffering, dying Black people for a week and the federal military cordon sanitaire and ruthless forced depopulation of Ninth Ward and East Bank of sections of New Orleans by the NORTHCOM forces, most illusions the Franklin high leadership were replaced with the cold reality of the Oval Office real educational abandonment policy for the East Bank section of New Orleans.
Franklin School steps to Bush
The high school leadership soon realized the political imperative of reopening Franklin in order to fight the nightmare of the Oval Office depopulation policy and take a leadership role in the healing process for the Ninth ward.
While the Oval Office and nation were getting ready to honoring Rosa Parks, the resistance movement to save Franklin high was gaining force and freedom fighters started to engage the NORTHCOM forces in the secret battle to rescue Franklin high from the US Department of Education and Homeland Security destruction.
The high school students and faulty, the Franklin community, the University of New Orleans and the Black community have to date successfully fought to regain political control of Franklin High School that will reopen in January. Franklin high victory would set the political stage and ease the way for other inner city schools to be politically forced to reopened as trauma centers and then later as operational schools before the faculties moved away.
Its appears the Oval Office, US Departments of Education, Homeland Security and Defense never read a book on the importance of schools in the recovery process.
Nor did they appear to really care!
While misinformation statements like “I would call the scope of this disaster (Katrina and the flooding of New Orleans), the scale of the mental heath problems, unprecedented,” were being made by Charles G. Curie, the mental heath administrator of the federal Department Heath and Human Services. Inner city potential trauma centers were being left to rot and families bonds destroyed.
The political cost to the Oval Office of finding thousands of die bodies in the Ninth ward appears to have far out weighted any mental heath or education issues.
Next level of instruction
Carol Christen, principle of Benjamin Franklin High School said, “ My concern was providing the next level of instruction, getting out seniors graduated and proving an opportunity for people to return to New Orleans.” Christen said. “I knew that if we didn’t open, that a good percentage of these students would not be back.”
Carol Christen was knowingly opposing the will of the oil lobby and the President of the United State of American.
Why did the Oval Office fear of Franklin High School so much?
Web-based education was about to take root in New Orleans public schools and it was critical that Franklin high infrastructure, both human and physical survive to ensure the content would be just like Franklin and not some watered down cheap federal copy to meet state standards. (See Nubian News “Why the US Department of Education fears Benjamin Franklin High School”)
This is the real fight for the hearts and minds of the youth of New Orleans.
Principle Christen, like other New Orleanains was ready willing and able to get in harms way to save her school and the East Bank community from needless political destruction.
Their goal: Re-open on Jan 17, the 300th birthday of Benjamin Franklin
According to the Times-Picayune—Beyond the fierce loyalty that most high schools inspire in their students, the effort to get Franklin open and get the students back in school has been driven in part by it rigorous academic program. As the top-rated high school in the state of Louisiana, Franklin has strict admission standards and an ethnically diverse student body, and last year had the second highest number of National Merit finalists in the nation.
On a much deeper educational activism level, Franklin administration, faulty and students had been the leading educational change agents within the New Orleans Parish School system. The ‘next level of instruction’ for Franklin faulty and the U of ON staff was positioning the high school and the University of New Orleans as dual use small business incubators and business platforms.
Once the school for rich white children and New Orleans elite, now Benjamin Franklin High, a.k.a. Franklin Carter School is the defender of African American intellectual excellence and the brightest hope for the return of many of the 60,000 displaced Black students of New Orleans and the 100,000 displaced students of the metropolitan region.
Benjamin Franklin high school after losing it library, cafeteria, computers, sports equipment and the recently repaired gymnasium floor to flooding, mud and mold, raise again from the hit list of US Department of Education, like a Black Phoenix. Franklin high has emerged as a beacon of hope.
The Franklin story is about the ruthlessness evil of the Oval Office treatment of the children of New Orleans and the struggle of the people’s collective resistance.
Benjamin Franklin High School community has fought back Katrina, Rita, the oil lobby, the Oval office, the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans attempts to closed the High School doors and attempts to kill the dreams and strong spirit that Benjamin Franklin High community stands for.
Against forces that would defeat most modern armies, the high school community and its Internet-based international networks have resisted and defended the educational right of the East Bank sections of New Orleans and Black youth around the country to an advanced education in a public school setting.
Underground Railroad networks
There are no public reports on how the Franklin high community was able on a daily basis to get their secret volunteer army of hundreds of freedom fighters, workers and supplies passed the armed federal trooper forces in the Ninth Ward for over the first six critical weeks, but they some how get it done. Only selective pieces of the covert operation have so far made their way to the surface so far.
Franklin networks and cells penetrate many levels of the government, military and the local oil industry. It is clear that the Franklin community networks extended into the National Guard and other friendly force intelligence, command and control structures. Only with the help of these friendly forces could the Franklin underground forces ever hope to avoid detection by the storm troopers and spooks of US Space Command and NORTHCORP patrolling the Ninth ward and University of New Orleans Lake front campus. The primary mission of the federal forces was keeping people away from their homes and businesses.
Military satellites over looked Franklin
A key challenge for Franklin high School was the US Space Command deployment of
the Ground Moving Target Indicator (GMTI) satellite network, which allowed US Space Command to view in real time video feed, the entire region of southern Louisiana. This federal military deployment would also prove to be a major weakness because the NORTHCOM army would never integrated their informational network with the National Guard ground forces for a total intelligence picture. US Space Commands could see and track where the floodwaters were and the rate they were spreading. Larger objects like adult alligators were trackable. These same satellites hunt and kill Mimi North Koran submarines in the Sea of Japan and follow moving objects underwater thousands of miles.
GMTI create surveillance management grids were reportedly designed for the local landing zones to rapidly move thousands of citizens out of the spreading floor water. The landing zones ended up being used to forcefully depopulating the city. One of these zones was over the 17th Street levee. The University of New Orleans Lake front campus was a forward basing center operation for ground forces within the 17th Street GMITI grid. US Space Command had thermal sensitive satellite sensors that was also were up linked to night helicopter thermal sensors watching targets of interest 24/7. Thousands of ground forces were deployed to the Ninth Ward. Check points were constructed and manned by armed troops.
More importantly, the GMITI allowed US Space Commanders the ability to locate track and adjust deployment of all the rescue assets, i.e. boats, trucks and helicopters. The location of all alligator farms and wild life parks were girded and monitored. The Franklin high school supplies vans and trucks should have been easily picked up. All this critical information was fed to President Bush situation room in Texas and Washington, DC. Some how the reconstruction of Franklin High was missed or over looked for six weeks.
The Franklin intelligence and freedom fighters units understood the nature of Oval threat and the best counter measurer to meet the threat was superior human intelligence and support of the New Orleans people, many of whom were military operatives. The Franklin freedom fighters most powerful wespone was the moral support of the city of New Orleans people to keep Franklin alive.
Many of the troops, particularly the National Guard, knew the real mission of the federal forces was to depopulate the city for the oil companies.
Long before the country comes to understand the ruthless of the federal depopulation policy toward New Orleans, many people from New Orleans were activity resisting the depopulation policy. They organized an Underground Railroad networking using the Internet, email, cell phones and word of mouth. This people’s resistance network was able to physically and politically reconstruct Benjainm Franklin High School to the point of being approved as a chartered school. Franklin can now service as a forward base operation to free other school from the Oval Office kill list.
The story of the survival of Benjamin Franklin High School is the story of the will of the Black people of New Orleans to protect their children future.
Benjamin Franklin High School represents the unnecessary dead and destruction of schools and students Franklin finally represents the hopeful birth of advanced web-based education and real hope for schools in southern Louisiana.
Franklin looked Katrina in the eye of the storm
One can feel the physical presence of Lake Pontchartrian from the Lake front campus of Benjamin Franklin High School it is so close. The University of New Orleans and Benjamin Franklin School share an elevated island on the rim of the northern tip of the city. The city elevations drop over 30 feet from Franklin High into the deepest valley in the city in the lower Ninth ward. Floodwater flow the same path of destruction to the bottom elevations of the city.
August 26, 2005 last was the last day of school the high and campus was secured for Katrina. The school best protection was its location and elevation. While the rupture of the 17th levee was near by the schools higher elevation forced most of the floodwater to drain away from the school. This limited the damage to the first floor.
The school of 958 student’s year has just started in a record hot wave. The jet stream in the Gulf waters 84 degree. There were 100 degree hotspots over both Rio Grand and Mississippi Rivers. There were back to back to back near 100 degree days. The Florida Keys appeared to be firing kill storms at Gulf cities every other week. This was already the worse hurricane season on record.
As Katrina was just recharging in the central Gulf region, yet to lock in its final course toward the New Orleans basin the faculty and students of Franklin High secured the school communication grid and the critical wed-education data as best they could, transferring mission critical school files to be stored at the university NASA water proof dada center and prepared to take a direct hit from Katrina.
Over the years, the high school has withstood tens of passing hurricanes but nothing like Katrina. Franklin high new home at the University of New Orleans offered the school a unique higher physical elevation and modern drain infrastructure to better resist and recovery flooding than most of the lower elevations wooden structures in the Ninth ward, the culture Harlem of Black New Orleans.
Oval Office urban kill zone
The school first floor was destroyed, but the rest of the school has little damage relative to the rest of the Ninth Ward ghetto was in some places inundated under 30 feet of floodwaters.
The second and third floor critcal classrooms of the high school were unscathed and frozen in time on August 26, 2006.
Homeland Security and the NORTHCOM federal troops refused to use the school as a trauma center or field hospital center to help the community stay together. The Oval plan was to use the flooding as a pretext to depopulation the Ninth ward. Dry land was only a few miles West Side of the 17th Street levees within the city that never flooded.
The Oval Office and oil lobby master plan was to downsized and depopulated the New Orleans industrial base. Reopening Franklin high would politically send the wrong message to the people of New Orleans and allow the wrong people in the political charged area before of the issue of the bodies could be addressed. Also saving anything in the East bank area ran counter to the goal and objects of the depopulation policy.
Education on the cheap
This federalization on the “cheap” of the New Orleans school system is designed around the Visio 2020 master plan and saving 90 percent of 560 million dollars New Orleans pre-Katrina educational budget. A operational Franklin High would exposed the myth of the charter school plan biggest weakness of poorly trained human infrastructure, i.e. lack of experienced computer integrated manufacturing (CIM) centric teachers, lack of existing CIM culture and physical equipment and communication networks.
Cost containment
The state of Louisiana problem is like both the city of New Orleans and the federal government; it too is financial bankrupt and lacks the money to bring up grade the public schools in New Orleans to Franklin High standards. The state control schools at 50 percent of the pre Katrina student population or of 35,000 would means operating 50 schools at cost of 280 million dollars.
Educational requirement of digitialized manufacturing
Virtual reality digitalized manufacturing necessitate workers able to function in a totally Internet-based computer integrated design and manufacturing environment. Informational-based educational models emphasizing mathematics, science and critical thinking would have to replace the assembly line orientation of today’s public school education. Benjainm Franklin has the core digitialized design and manufacturing curriculum and faulty and network relations already developed and operational. The real truth is that there is a deadly slave triangular backdoor sub-assembly trade growing between China, Canada and Mexico in components and sub-assemble and final assembles those ends up in America as cheap imports. Millions of the American entry-level jobs are lost to this backdoor trade. The trade is creating new seroius pressure on American high school to migration their computer integrated manufacturing curriculums to digital design and manufacturing curriculum. Most public schools could not afford the expensive IT upgrades necessary to teach digital design and informational systems. Franklin High School is one of a hand full of public school that can.
Reestablishment of educational Apartheid
Franklin High and other elements in the Black community knew that over 20 charter schools are planned in the initial phase of implementation the so-called Philadelphia educational network model to replace the existing New Orleans school system was a poorly planned political ruse. Many of the initial charter schools, i.e. Ben Franklin Elementary, Ben Franklin High, Lusher Elementary and High school, Audubon Montessori and Edna Karr School, were former Magnet schools and have advanced computer science infrastructure, that they painstakingly accumulated over the years as Magnets before Katrina.
These former magnet schools already have state-of-the-art campuses and access to university academic resources. With a year of operation and students who already benefited from Katrina, these schools get would another leg up their poorer inner city counterparts. Most of the other schools coming back online would be Black and poor. Many of their student students are destitute, mental at risk and hundred of miles away from New Orleans. The former Magnet as the lead charter schools is de facto reestablishment of educational apartheid in the New Orleans Parish.
Weakness of the freestanding charter school
The Franklin community knew the charter school model was developed as proto type of the Vision 2020 myth of centralized control of the New Orleans public schools. Most charter schools will be free standing schools. Most new teachers are being imported into the charter school system are not strong in basic computer application literacy.
This school model lacks the advanced educational infrastructure (i.e. IT application teachers and IT equipment) to deal with B. Franklin High and other charter school university/multinational collaborative partnerships.
Most second wave free standing charters schools and district schools would seriously lack the organic relationship and integration Benjamin Franklin High School has with the computer science and IT departments at the University of New Orleans, that allow it high school students to incubate the latest informational technologies.
The seamless integration of Franklin High School curriculum critical to the development of higher educational levels would not reachable for years.
More importantly, the Franklin community knew that free standing charter schools would be political programmed failures to cover the real agenda of the Vision 2020 which is state controlled city schools. The state of Louisiana has taken direct legal control of 102 of the 117 schools in New Orleans. Charter schools were being used by the federal and state government to consolidated all New Orleans Parish administration and boards under unified and centralized fiscal structures.
The federally funded-chartered schools are the front end of the process of centralization of the New Orleans school system. Lacking the funding to retool and train web-based educators and staff, the consolidation was driven by a fiscal, not educational agenda. The real fiscal fight would be in terms of the content of the post-Katrina reform curruluims being designed and written by the State Department of Education that will be introduced into the New Orleans schools coming back online in the fall of 2006.
Power of Internet
Using the Franklin High school’s e-mail group database, a core of group of parents, teachers, students and friends of the high school and university was recruited and tasks out with various duties and projects. Somewhere out of state college students
Given the state of ground communications and lack of surface roads, it was a logistical nightmare to procure and transport all the things Benjainm Franklin High School would need to start it massive clean-up and rewiring of the communication grid. A secret Franklin-based people’s Redball express transportation Corp was in operation around the clock in the ghetto.
For over four months, the Franklin army labored 24 hours a day, 7-day weeks the first almost two months in secret in order to raise the high school back to operational levels.
According to physics teacher, who is also the head football coach and US Marine Corp Reserve captain, it was crucial that volunteers “stay below the radar,” captain Firneno said, “We didn’t want to create a situation where they (school officials) were going to come and tell us we couldn’t be there. We felt it was easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission”
Parents came in chainsaws and within one day cleared the entire tree from the courtyard. Other parent brought generator, cleaning supplies, garden sprayers, wet-dry vacuums and surgical masks. The school was cleared and sanitized.
Charter proposal taskforce
Meanwhile, Christen, other faculty members and leaders from the University of New Orleans worked on putting the charter proposal together. As a charter school, Franklin would still be subject to state laws and accountability standards but would be able to open up independently, obtain money allocated for charter schools, maintain its admission standards and, because of its partnership with UNO, have access to college-level resources.
On October 28, 2005, the Orleans Parish School Board approved Franklin’s charter application along with applications from 19 other schools. Also 60 day after the 17th Street levee flooded 80 percent of the city and most Black public schools.
The school’s parents association has started to collect money for faculty salaries and instructional materials have risked 90,000 dollars.
Academics will remain the school’s cornerstone, but tending to the emotional needs of students also will be a priority.
But Christen knows that being able to call themselves Benjamin Franklin High School student again will be an important part of their recovery. As stated above—“ People will recover fairly quickly from such a disaster, she, if families are not divided, if basic needs are met and if appropriate mourning – for people, pets or possessions- can take place.
But isolation from social networks can lead to depression; so meeting the community’s needs helps individuals recover.
“The first thing you can do to rebuild your community is to reopen your schools”
Franklin high school reopened at time and stand as bacon of hope and an otherwise hopeless situation.
posted by Nubianobserver at 11:29 AM
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