SOUTH
Head of school Mickey Landry took over New Orleans' Lafayette
Academy in July 2007 just after the failing school had reopened
as a charter school in 2006-2007. "It was terrible," he says. "They
had very low teacher morale. In the year before my arrival the
school had lost 20 out of 50 teachers before Christmas. The tiles
on the floor were gone. The place was filthy - you could smell
the human waste on the floors of the hallways. The toilets hadn't
been flushed much less cleaned. There were 324 window missing
window panes. It was a wreck but I knew they had a core group
of great people at the school and that we could build the school
around them."
Since taking over from a for-profit company in 2007, Landry
and his 92 staff have used their $9 million budget to significantly
improve conditions for the 750 students in pre-K to seventh
grade. "We've come along way. The building looks magnificent.
Everyone who comes in it thinks it's just the brightest cheeriest
place. But we have a long way to go - our kids can do a lot more
and we want to get there as quickly as we can."
Landry returned to New Orleans, where he grew up, after several
years heading independent schools in New Hampshire and
Colorado. "I saw post-Katrina New Orleans and wanted to do
something for it," he says of his return. And he has implemented a
unique approach to teaching.
"From my own experience of running schools that were failing
and had to be turned around, the key element is getting all of the
adults pulling in the same direction. It either happens or it doesn't
happen with individual teachers. My experience is that a school is
going nowhere unless all the adults are on the same page." They
Lafayette Academy Charter School
Rebuilding After Disaster
Produced by Eric Gunn & Written by Jim Barlow
"I see the pain that my children are going
through the level of transience they
experience because they have to move a
lot, the lack of resources they have in the
city right now. We just try to help any
way we can."
~Mickey Landry
58 | CHARTER SCHOOLS TODAY SPRING 2009

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