Q&A with Leslie Jacobs: former mayoral candidate, education reformer, founder of 504ward and Educate Now. Leslie and her husband Scott are fundholders at the Greater New Orleans Foundation.
When you traveled throughout Orleans parish campaigning for mayor, what made you the most hopeful?
What made me the most hopeful was the will and energy of the people. In every neighborhood you find people engaged and who care. The level of active engagement and the number of people giving their time and energy is inspiring-from fighting blight to revitalizing NORD to helping small businesses succeed to efforts to help the elderly-you name it, and there are folks in the city working to fix it or make it better.
And caused you the most despair?
We deserve better from city government. Working mothers have no safe place for their kids to go after school or on holidays because NORD doesn’t function properly. A homeowner can’t get the city to cut the grass on the vacant lot next door- one that the city owns. It shouldn’t take a year to get a streetlight fixed. It can take a business owner one week to get a permit, when it should only take an hour. Many neighborhoods can compete for the worst roads. I could go on.
As a passionate voice for education reform, what advice will you give to the next mayor?
Historically, the mayor has had little engagement with public education and has no direct role in running schools. While our schools need to get better, they are much improved since Katrina and there is a lot of good momentum. City services, on the other hand, need major improvement. Given the challenges facing the city, my advice to the next mayor is that the city is really broken – go fix it! Reducing violent crime, creating good jobs, working with the neighborhoods on code enforcement and blight reduction, developing a functioning city hall and balancing the budget will take leadership and focus from the next mayor.
On education, the mayor can use the bully pulpit to help children and schools. In the annual state of the city address, include a report card on the state of our children: In education, what percentage of our fourth graders are reading on grade level? What percentage of our freshman graduated from high school four years later and how prepared are they for college or to join the workforce? If these indicators are not improving, the mayor could be a powerful voice in demanding change. The annual report should also include crime indicators: what percentage of our youth are victims or perpetrators of violent crimes? And I would have a measurement to capture the mental and physical health of our young people as well.
I also see the mayor engaging with the school facility master plan to make certain all schools are in good facilities and that we find ways to partner with NORD in rebuilding, so we can co-locate NORD facilities on school campuses.
What role is the nonprofit community playing in our city?
Our nonprofits are playing a critical and inspirational role in almost every issue or problem confronting the city. You will find people with energy and deep knowledge who can help New Orleans address our problems. Examples are everywhere. The Afterschool Partnership has focused on out-of-school programming and the redevelopment of NORD. Beacon of Hope, the Broadmoor Civic Association and the Neighborhood Partnership Network have worked long and hard on neighborhood recovery issues and combating blight. The Crime Coalition has invested tremendous energy in understanding key reforms needed for a more effective policy department and criminal justice system. The nonprofit community has been stepping up to both understand the issues and work on solutions . The next mayor needs to tap this energy and expertise and find a way to leverage it in making New Orleans a much better city.
I am looking for some transparency on an issue that I believe is very important to developing a sense of the parishes of which the greater metropolitan area consists.
In 1980, when I returned home to New Orleans, after sixteen years away, I noticed at the time that the Times Picayune had suggested that Greater New Orleans consisted of seven parishes. But their page-one sidebar eventually disappeared from the newspaper altogether. In late 2005, I notice that the GNOCDC listed ten parishes. Recently, however, I have noticed that The Greater New Orleans Foundation lists thirteen parishes (listed below). So I am wondering which figures are a psychological reality and which are a governmental demographic statistic? Exactly how does one decide how many parishes the greater metropolitan area comprises? What is the metric for deciding this? More important, however, is this: whatever the real number is, shouldn’t we begin to create a conscious sense of unity among the parishes by informing all residents that their adjacency and proximity are the source of their greater bond to one another? Why should the real number remain a secret among residents?
I am not wondering where the Data Center or the Foundation gets its data from, because the website of each makes that clear. What isn’t clear is the discrepancy in the figures.
Assumption
Jefferson
Lafourche
Orleans
Plaquemines
St. Bernard
St. Charles
St. James
St. John the Baptist
St. Tammany
Tangipahoa
Terrebone
Washington
Thanks for your question, Mackie. How the government or the chamber of commerce made this decision, I’m not certain. You might want to look at this Wikipedia entry (caveat lector!) which raises many more questions than it answers. How and why the Foundation’s board made the decision to serve these 13 parishes, I also can’t say. It would take considerable digging through our archives to find the origin of this choice and I don’t think we’d learn much from the exercise. I suspect the choice was based more on a desire to serve than on any metric. That said, I very much like your suggestion that we “create a conscious sense of unity among the parishes” — a lovely thought. We need to better understand the myriad ways our destinies are linked together.
Wish you had stayed in the race.