Community opposition leads Recovery District to drop plans for school in eastern New Orleans

Louisiana Recovery School District Superintendent Patrick Dobard has dropped a plan to turn the BellSouth building in eastern New Orleans into a school because of community opposition to the site. Nola.com reports that more classrooms still are needed in eastern New Orleans, and Dobard has asked the Orleans Parish School Board for help in developing an alternative. The Recovery District's school rebuilding plan aims to avoid the situation before Hurricane Katrina in which a mismatch existed between where students lived and where the schools were. But the mismatch is recurring in eastern New Orleans. The most recent amendments to the facilities plan call for almost 13,000 seats in the area. But demographic projections say more than 14,000 public school children are expected to live there by 2016.