The Hechinger Report
JEFFERSON PARISH, La. — The school year ended at Washington Elementary at 2:35 p.m. on a hot Tuesday afternoon in May, but one hour later, 9-year-old Malaysia Robertson lingered outside.
She had spent most of her life at this small public school in the New Orleans suburb where she lives with her grandmother, but when she returned to school this month, it had closed. Like thousands of other students in Louisiana’s largest school district, she has been shuffled to a new campus in a consolidation plan that affects nearly one in 10 of the district’s Black students, like Malaysia, a disproportionate number...