N.O. schools tasked to homegrown educator

Hurricane Katrina cleared the way for changes in New Orleans public schools that were widely heralded nationwide as innovative but were often painful locally. Remedies included the firing of thousands of teachers and school workers, the takeover of most schools by state government and the proliferation of independently run charter schools. It made for hard feelings. Some saw the takeover by the Louisiana Recovery School District as high-handed and disrespectful, says state Sen. J. P. Morrell, a frequent early critic of the RSD. Targets of the criticism included Robin Jarvis, the state Department of Education official first tapped to run the RSD amid the post-Katrina chaos, then Paul Vallas, the former Chicago schools chief who followed Jarvis and attracted negative notice with his sometimes brusque manner. Another outsider succeeded Vallas when John White arrived in spring 2011 from New York, where he had worked for the city school system. One of his first moves was to tap Patrick Dobard as a deputy. Dobard was another state education department executive, but he was born, reared and educated in New Orleans. Now, White is the state’s new superintendent of education and Dobard was named in January to head the RSD. Dobard tells The Associated Press he brings more than New Orleans roots to the job. His experience includes teaching in his hometown early in his career, but also a stint at a public high school in rural Tensas Parish in north Louisiana. Read the full story here.