By: Philip White
Can you send your child or grandchild to the school of your choice? Can you decide exactly where you child or grandchild will attend a k-12 school? Can you choose a k-12 school with an excellent reputation for producing productive and well -educated citizens? Can you send your child or grandchildren to a school with the curriculum emphasis or career focus that you desire for the children’s future?
If you can say yes to the above questions, you indeed have school choice. If you have the resources, connections, wherewithal, or desirable home location, you have the capacity to decide where your child or grandchild will attend school.
If you can’t send your child or grandchild to the school of your choice, you absolutely don’t have school choice. When politicians propose school choice as a means of providing a quality education for its community’s children, it does not necessarily mean a quality education for all of the community’s children. Politicians, educational gurus, and so called educational experts, might propose school choice as a school reform component, but that’s not their primary interests.
Their interests lie in exercising the power, influence and control of a community’s resources, culture, heritage and traditions. Many in any community’s power and formal leadership core, are quite willing to experiment with the lives of poor and disenfranchised segments of the community, but would never subject their own children to the experimental educational reform models.
Recently, during the Senate hearings for Betsy DeVos, the Trump nominee for the United States Secretary of Education, Minnesota Senator Al Franken asked DeVos if she or her children ever attended a public school. Franken asked DeVos if she ever worked in a public school. DeVos responded no to all of Franken’s questions, but DeVos indicated that she was a mentor for a few public-school students. Veterans of the New Orleans educational system should recognize that if anyone would ever ask New Orleans’ Betsy DeVos the same questions that Franken asked DeVos, New Orleans’s Betsy DeVos (Leslie Jacobs) would have similar answers as DeVos.
If your child or grandchildren are subject to this New Orleans model of so called “School Choice” named One App, do you have the freedom to choose the school of your choice? If your child is subject to a “random” selection process where your first three school selections are not honored, you definitely don’t have a choice. Your child must attend the school assigned by the One App Process. If you find yourself in this situation, you should demand your elected officials accept responsibility for this debacle or modify his or her position. Don’t forget you elected those officials to represent your interests, so hold them accountable for doing the right thing for your children or grandchildren.
In this era of school reform and school choice, a real paradigm shift must be implemented in order for the entire community to advance. The community must transition from the maintenance of the status quo, where the all of decision making remain in the hands of the power elite, to a broader and more global perspective that includes providing equity and opportunity for all.
If the community is to improve, a more holistic approach must be implemented. A broader economic approach must be implemented. Greater resources must be allocated to the economic development of the entire community. Capacity must expand. A greater entrepreneurial spirit must be developed within an entire community. As the economic disenfranchised become full participants in creating living wage economic opportunities, school choice becomes less important.
In dynamic and progressive communities where there is full and living wage employment for the adults, there is a direct correlation to viable, productive schools. Fully functional and economically dynamic communities create school communities that provide quality educational opportunities for the entire community. Those are the environments where real school choice exists.
Real school choice is when the entire community decides to create a quality learning and living environment for everybody. When the entire community is vested in the success of the entire community, school choice becomes an irrelevant issue.
When and where every school in the community is considered by all as a quality school, nobody participates in a lottery to attend a specific school
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
- Louisiana’s Insurance Crisis Is Destroying Black Wealth. - June 6, 2026
- Black Men’s Health 2026: Are You Strong Enough to Fight Back? - June 3, 2026
- Black In America?You are Political Not Human - May 31, 2026
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
This article is so right. The One App application and process is a joke. It was never meant for you to actually receive admission into the school of your choice. Personal connections get you in the school of your choice. One App just keeps track of the number of kids enrolling in New Orleans schools. That’s it. It’s a numbers game. The kids are just collateral damage. So sad.