4000 Cadillac St, New Orleans 70122, (504) 324-7600
https://mcdonogh35.inspirenolacharterschools.org/
When McDonogh No. 35 opened its doors at 635 South Rampart Street in 1917, it became the first black public high school in the city of New Orleans. In 1900, the New Orleans School Board limited black public education to the fifth grade, and segregated black schools suffered from inadequate funding, unsafe facilities, overcrowding, limited curricular options, and inequitable teacher salaries. Under constant pressure from black parents, community leaders, and civic organizations, the school board was eventually pressured to provide education through eighth grade, and in 1917, members of the black community successfully petitioned the school board for a high school. It remained the only four-year public high school for black students until 1942 when Booker T. Washington High School opened its doors. (See Booker T. Washington High School).
Although McDonogh No. 35 was the first of its kind, students were not given a new building nor all the equipment and supplies they needed. McDonogh No. 13, an all white school, was converted for their use, and the white students moved into a newly built school. In spite of all these obstacles, the students at McDonogh No. 35 made tremendous progress academically. So much progress that in 1923, the New Orleans School Board voted to suspend the teaching of Spanish, chemistry, and physics at the school. This action jeopardized the school’s standing as a college preparatory school. It was only through protest from the black community that the decision was reversed one year later.
Throughout its history, McDonogh No. 35 has changed locations several times. It moved to its current location in a new state-of-the-art building in 2015. For most of its history it was one of the city’s premier college preparatory high schools even as the New Orleans school system suffered from neglect, underfunding, racial re-segregation, and extreme poverty among its majority-black student body. From the beginning McDonogh No. 35’s success stemmed from the hard work of its outstanding, dedicated educators and the students’ determination to succeed against all odds. In the years before Hurricane Katrina, it was recognized locally and nationally for its academic achievement despite the fact that, by the end of the twentieth century, New Orleans’ public school district was 93 percent African American, had 77 percent low-income students, trailed white suburban school districts’ per capita spending by four to one, was plagued by mismanagement and corruption, and was consistently ranked among the worst public school districts in the country.
With most of the city’s poor and working-class residents displaced following Hurricane Katrina, legislators and private sector advocates swiftly pushed through reforms that eventually transformed New Orleans into the nation’s first exclusively charter public school district. These reforms hinged on the illegal firing of 7500 veteran, mostly African American, educators, and resulted in exclusionary admissions policies, the concentration of schools in whiter neighborhoods, and disruptive school closures. In 2010, students, parents, teachers, and community members from throughout the city packed McDonogh No. 35’s auditorium for a public meeting to express opposition to the state takeover and conversion to charter schools. In 2018, against the protests of its loyal supporters, McDonogh No. 35 was the last New Orleans public school to become a charter school. (Adapted from Lolita Cherrie, Co-Founder, The Creole Genealogical and Historical Association, CreoleGen)
To Learn More
- Kristen L. Buras, Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance. Routledge, 2014.
- Lolita Cherrie, “McDonogh No. 35 High School – Sophomore Class 1931,” CreoleGen, July 10, 2012, http://www.creolegen.org/2012/07/10/mcdonogh-35-high-school-sophomore-class-1931/.
- Donald E. Devore and Joseph Logsdon, Crescent city schools: Public Education in New Orleans, 1841-1991, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 1991.
Douglas N. Harris, Charter School City: What the End of Traditional Public Schools in New Orleans Means for American Education, University of Chicago Press, 2020.