PERPETUAL MOTON - Neither wind nor rain nor landfill contamination can keep Moton Charter
School from its mission: teaching children
Times-Picayune, The (New Orleans, LA) - May 19, 2007

Author/Byline: Darran Simon Staff writer
Section: NATIONAL
Page: 01
Readability: 11-12 grade level (Lexile: 1260)
n his second year of first grade, 8-year-old Robert Thomas had battled his way to doing grade-level work. He could easily write
sentences, his mother said, largely because of his new environment: a public charter school with a teacher and principal who recognized
he was capable of more than he'd shown.
So Christy Kisack popped into Robert Russa Moton Charter School around lunchtime one day this spring. She wanted Robert's teacher to
put the week's homework sheet in his book bag so she could go over it with her son at home.
"You just have to stay with him," said I. Walker, Robert's first-grade teacher, "Don't give up on him."
Resiliency has become the mantra of Moton Charter, where enrollment dropped by about 25 percent after Hurricane Katrina. But the
disaster wasn't the school's first dose of upheaval -- or displacement.
In 1994, the school, built atop the contaminated soil of an old city landfill, moved from Abundance Street to temporary space in a Catholic
school, where it stayed for seven years while the Environmental Protection Agency finished a cleanup of the area and deemed the school
site safe.
Moton moved back, only to be wiped out by the flood four years later.
But the school persevered. Teachers prepared for the 2006-07 school year in an accounting firm's boardroom while waiting for the
Orleans Parish School Board to find them a home, and the school lost more than a month before it finally moved into a former Catholic
school in August.
As this academic year comes to a close, and the school's lease coming to an end to make way for the returning Catholic school, the
School Board is trying to find Moton yet another temporary home, one it can occupy in time for the first day of school in July. A proposed
new school building will be part of a long-range master plan, which is still incomplete, said School Board President Phyllis Landrieu.
That means Moton's Abundance Street site, built on 5 feet of fresh soil that topped 17 feet of soil contaminated with remnants of the city
dump, is unlikely to reopen because of pending litigation surrounding the School Board's decision to build a school there, officials said.
"In spite of all the obstacles everybody is continually throwing at us, we just try to persevere and focus on the children," said Paulette
Bruno, Moton's principal since 1992. "If not for our children, I would not be here."
Year-round schooling
Through the turmoil, Moton Charter has enjoyed two constants: Bruno's long-term leadership and a commitment to extra attention for its
students by keeping them in school virtually year-round.
Moton's school year starts in July and ends almost 11 months later, including several three-week breaks in which more than 75 percent of
the students voluntarily attend a four-hour daily academic program. Teachers and parents at the school, where most of the student body
qualify for free or reduced-price lunch, realize that some students need the constant reinforcement.
Of the 128 public schools in New Orleans before Katrina, Moton was among a handful that scored above the state average and avoided
being taken over by the state.
Moton Charter is housed in a relatively undamaged Catholic school in Gentilly, St. Leo the Great, but the facility has fewer amenities than
Moton students enjoyed on Abundance Street. Gone are the learning centers, an instrumental music and band room, closed-circuit
televisions in classrooms and offices, several computer labs, a 500-seat auditorium and other luxuries.
More than 100 donated computers sit unused in the back of St. Leo classrooms because the electrical system cannot handle the load and
Moton's charter board decided not to upgrade it because the school will not be at St. Leo permanently, Bruno said.
The St. Leo building was leased as-is by the Orleans Parish School Board, Bruno said. Bruno said she hopes Moton, which serves
prekindergarten through sixth grade, can stay in the Gentilly area because the school has developed a new population of students and a

 relationship with the community. The central location also is ideal because Moton draws students from across the city, including the West
Bank and eastern New Orleans, she said.
Moton also needs extra space because school officials expect enrollment to jump from about 210 to 262. Moton also hopes to have in its
new location computer labs, a mathematics and science lab, and a reading and resource room, according to a letter Bruno wrote to the
Orleans School Board.
Steady hand at helm
Bruno has grown with Moton. A Southern University graduate, she started her teaching career in 1982 in the Orleans public school
system. By 1987, she was at Moton, and became the school's principal in 1992.
Moton is one of 31 charter schools in New Orleans, which has seen an explosion of charter schools since Katrina. Moton was slightly
ahead of the rush; more than 75 percent of the school's parents voted in spring 2005 to charter the school, and the school planned to
submit its application in October of that year, Bruno said, but the flood delayed plans.
The decision to charter was, in part, to keep Moton's unique year-round schedule, Bruno said.
"When I decided to continue the movement with the charter school, it was because we had made a difference. I just couldn't see myself
leaving these children out there with nothing," Bruno said.
Parent Michon Snowden said the year-round schedule is one feature that draws her to the school because she has seen her children get
stronger academically. Her oldest, Ashley, now a student at Hynes Charter School, scored high on the LEAP test when she was a student
at Moton.
"I am not taking credit for that. She learned that in school," said Snowden, 31, a nursing student at Delgado Community College.
When Snowden's family returned to New Orleans in 2006 from evacuation to Atlanta, she enrolled her two daughters at Lafayette
Academy School Uptown because she didn't know Moton was up and running.
But when she learned it was, Snowden transferred her younger children, Taylor, 7, and Kamryn, 8. Moton was familiar to her and the
teachers knew her children, Snowden said. Besides, she liked the fact that Bruno, who is black, was still the school's principal.
"I have never encountered a school setting or a principal that cares so much for these children," said Snowden, who also is black. "Our
children, as African-American children, are already seen at the bottom of the pole; she never approaches them like that."
Apart from her children's academic growth, Snowden said, Taylor and Kamryn get to see people who look like them working hard to
achieve.
"I want them to be strong black women," Snowden said. "What better way do you teach them to be strong black women than to have a
principal who reflects that every day?"
'I am very proud'
Kisack's road to Moton wasn't accidental, either. She left Houston and returned home in 2006 and tried to enroll Robert in Moton that fall.
People she knew would brag about the school, she said, and she got permission to stop in on her lunch break from her job as a FEMA
inspector and check on her son without having to make an appointment.
"I like to walk up on my baby and see him doing his work," Kisack said.
When Robert, 8, first enrolled in Moton, he was confrontational, said Walker, his teacher. She recalled him once snatching a pencil out of
another child's hand, expecting a fight, but the student walked away. After the first quarter, Robert settled down and has been on the
honor roll for the past two quarters, Walker said.
"I am very proud of Robert. Of course, I've been encouraging him a lot, trying to keep him on the right track," she said.
One day this spring, Robert sat in a corner of Walker's class, putting 14 states in alphabetical order for a class exercise. He leaned back
in his chair, waiting for Walker to come by and check his work. He got them right, and she put a giant A on his paper. A few minutes later,
Bruno strolled in. She made her rounds through the class and walked toward Robert. She said many of her children are like Robert: They
need more one-on-one time with teachers.
"You got an A on your paper, I see," Bruno said.
Robert craned his neck, looked up, and smiled.

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Darran Simon can be reached at dsimon@timespicayune.com or at (504) 826-3386.
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Copyright: Copyright, 2007, The Times-Picayune Publishing Corporation. All Rights Reserved. Used by NewsBank with Permission.