NOLA Public Schools has led a dramatic increase in the number of students meeting academic proficiency standards, and the performance gap between students in Orleans Parish and Louisiana as a whole dramatically decreased between 2005-2019. The impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic hit urban districts particularly hard, and New Orleans was no exception. Despite this, the district has had amongst the highest levels of improvement in the state of Louisiana since the pandemic.

Every student in New Orleans deserves equal access to high quality schools where their interests will come first, where they and their families will have choice, and where educators will have the tools and support they need to be successful. Please view the Profile At-a-Glance for Charter Applicants for more information on the district.

The NOLA Public Schools Request For Applications began on September 6, 2024 and a detailed timeline is provided below. If you are interested in applying after the deadline for applications has passed, you may use the materials and information from previous charter cycles below as a reference, however, please note that the application may be updated annually, and thus there may be changes to the upcoming cycle's application in comparison with the previous year's application.

In compliance with R.S. 17:3982, the Orleans Parish School Board is making public through our website and in printed form upon request, the guidelines for submitting a charter proposal, all forms required for submission of a charter proposal, the timelines established for accepting and reviewing charter proposals, the process that will be used to review charter proposals submitted to the board, and the name and contact information for a primary point of contact for charter proposals.

Any organization or individual may become eligible to submit an application by meeting specific eligibility requirements as outlined in the Eligibility Determination document and submitting a Letter of Intent. In order to be eligible to submit a full application in the NOLA Public Schools' Fall 2024 Charter Request for Applications process all Eligibility Determination and Letter of Intent are due to charterapp@nolapublicschools.com by October 15, 2024 at 12PM CST.

Application materials are below. If you have any questions please contact Anne-Lise McCarver at amccarver@nolapublicschools.com.

The documents linked below are needed to complete a charter application. They are attached in Word to make it easier for applicants to copy the questions into their own documents, but applicants are required to submit their documents via PDF, except for the Overview Template.

The Eligibility Documentation, which includes the directions for what to include in the Letter of Intent, is due by October 15, 2024 by 12:00PM Central Time.

• Eligibility Documentation

The full application is due by October 25, 2024 by 12:00PM Central Time. Those materials are below:

• New Operator Charter Application
• Experienced Operator Charter Application
• Overview Template: All applicant groups must complete this workbook and submit it along with the rest of the group's application materials.

Additional Resources:

• Profile At-a-Glance, 2023
• Charter RFA Applicant Training Deck, 2024 and Recording of Charter RFA Applicant Info Session, 2024 (Passcode: 4p$m5d12)
• Charter Application Standards, New Operator
• Louisiana Department of Education's Charter Applicant Toolbox

Past RFA Cycles (Pre-2020)

• 2019
• 2018
• Fall of 2017

Additional Cycles can be found in our archive website: previous.opsb.us – for additional information please consider filing a public records request.