Mayor-elect Landrieu has said that selecting a new police chief for the NOPD is one of his top priorities as he prepares to assume office on May 3^rd. Landrieu has put together a task force of 21 local leaders, and has also enlisted the help of the National Association of the Chiefs of Police to assist in recruiting and interviewing qualified candidates.

Landrieu’s emphasis on instilling a sense of integrity and professionalism within the Department is well placed – just this Monday a second former police officer plead guilty to covering up police misconduct after the Danziger Bridge incident in which the police shot two civilians during Hurricane Katrina. It will be interesting to see who emerges as the top contender for the position, and how effective the new chief is at changing culture within an institution that for years has failed to garner the trust of community residents.  Landrieu would be well served by making sure that whomever he hires has broad discretion to make changes where necessary within the ranks of the department in order to make sure all members of the NOPD are properly trained and committed to acting in good faith toward the citizens they are sworn to serve and protect.

In national news, it was interesting to learn on Monday that the U.S. Department of Education has bypassed Louisiana in the first round of funding through the “Race to the Top” program. Delaware and Tennessee instead will be the first states to receive a chunk of the $100 billion in stimulus money which President Obama has set aside for education funding, with other states eligible to reapply for the second round of disbursements.

Although Education Secretary Arne Duncan has praised New Orleans for educational reform measures taken since Hurricane Katrina, local residents seem to have become increasingly skeptical about the benefits of the many new charter schools for their children. These frustrations were vented Monday as a group of angry parents who want to put the brakes on the charter school conversions expressed their frustration at a meeting of the State Board of Education, calling for a return to local control over schools. In early March of this year the Times Picayune ran a five-part series highlighting what the transition to more charter schools has meant for both families and educators.  In her first installment in the series, reporter Sarah Carr documented the pressure that school choice places on parents and kids by the application process. The article cites a Tulane survey which found that while 90% of parents wanted school choice, only 57% felt they had choices. Perhaps more importantly, Carr documents how more savvy and better educated parents are more likely to be able to navigate complicated application forms and confusing bureaurocracies than lower income families with less education – a problem which would tend to compound educational inequity rather than reduce it.

In a separate article Carr emphasized the concerns expressed by some teachers in New Orleans charters schools about their own ability and willingness to continue working such long hours over the long term.   Frances Geisler, a teacher at the Akili Academy Charter who loves the school, asked: “How good a school are you if you have really strong results but can’t take that model anywhere else because it kills people after two years?”  The problem of long hours and heavy demands on teachers is a national concern about the sustainability of the charter school model, and one that must be seriously considered by Secretary Duncan and the Obama Administration as it decides how to allocate “Race to the Top” funds.

It has now been a month since the New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl and life continues to revive in New Orleans.  I have spoken with some colleagues in the city and they said that the victory gave the city a shot in the arm as did the Mardi Gras celebration a few weeks later.  Still, they told me of the challenges that the city continues to face:  the slow pace of rebuilding, the high cost of housing, the rise of the homeless population, etc.  They are frustrated that after almost five year the progress that they expected has been so slow.  They are tired and worn.  When I last spoke with the retired Episcopal bishop, Charles Jenkins in 2008, he told me of the mental and psychological toll that Katrina and its aftermath had had upon him.  Others who I worked with in the city told me of the miasma of heaviness of one’s being which lingers far after the hurricane . 

The emergence of mental health issues has been steady throughout the recovery and rebuilding phase.  In addition to the feeling of frustration mentioned earlier there have been feelings of abandonment and hopelessness.   Many New Orleaneans feel abandoned because they believe that the city and its plight have been forgotten by the rest of the country.  Even with the promises of the Obama administration and the visit by the President to the city in October 2009, many people are unimpressed with the slow pace of the rebuilding.  Residents are worn down by the daily struggle of life in the city; many former residents wishing to return find that they cannot do so due to the lack of affordable housing. 

While everyone waits for the rebuilding to be completed, the mental health needs of the community need to be addressed.  With the rise of the homeless population, mental health needs are on the rise.  With the lack of medical facilities, minor and major mental health issues are often ignored.  With limited beds for psychiatric care, the jails and prisons have become the de facto mental health facilities.   

Despite these problems, some help is on the way now that the federal government has begun to provide aid for a new hospital to be built to replace CharityHospital which had functioned as one of the main hospitals in the city that had traditionally served many of the most vulnerable residents of the city.  Still, this will take time.  It may be good news thatNew Orleans has become an incubator for new ideas about education but it is surely not good that the same cannot be said about the medical infrastructure and its treatment of mental health issues.